kishkindha Kanda of Ramayana

May 22, 2013, 12:50 am

≫ Next: Introduction to Madhubani Paintings

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The Monkey Kingdom

Beside Pampa Lake the season of spring had carpeted the soft turf with 'blue and yellow flowers, covered the trees and creepers in blossom, and wafted black honeybees among the perfumed blooms. Creepers embraced the trees like amorous young women with their lovers cuckoos sang love-songs and peacocks danced.

Rama could think only of Sita. The lotus flowers on the lake reminded him of her; he heard her calling him to see the beauty of the waterfalls and smelled her in the scented flowers. Without her, he could not live.

Perhaps she will give up her life when she sees spring without me,' he spoke aloud. 'If she would come to me now, I would be satisfied here forever, and would never wish again for Ayodhya or even the pleasures of paradise.

Be patient,' said Lakshmana. 'Now is the time for heroism and determination, not grief and despondency. We must find her wherever Ravana has hidden her.

One day Sugriva, lord of the monkey tribes called the Vanaras, came near the lake to gather fruits and spied them. When he saw those two mighty princes he froze in fear, thinking them allies of his enemy Vali. He hurried back to his lair and called together his counsellors.

Vali has sent two powerful warriors, disguised as hermits. How shall we protect ourselves? Among his followers was Hanuman, son of the Wind god, who was wise and fearless. He counselled Sugriva.

We need not fear Vali, who cannot enter thi region. Why should we panic at the sight of two men?

These are no ordinary men,' replied Sugriva. 'They look more like gods, and they may be with Vali. Go and observe them closely and find out their business.

Hanuman disguised himself as a forest hermit and approached the two brothers. Bowing before them, he spoke with gentle words.

I salute you. With eyes like lotuses and weapons of gold you look like the Moon god and Sun god. I am Hanuman, son of the Wind god, minister of the monkey-lord Sugriva. Pray tell me who you are and what brings you here.

Hanuman's words showed him to be learned and gentle, and Rama answered him with respect. 'I am Rama, son of Dasaratha, and this is my brother Lakshmana.' He went on to say how they came to be in the forest, and how Sita had been kidnapped. 'We know of Sugriva and we seek his friendship and help,' said Lakshmana.

Hanuman thought these two men would be valuable allies for Sugriva. He in turn told them how Sugriva had been exiled and how he had lost his wife at the hands of his cruel brother Vali. 'Come, I will take you to Sugriva,' he concluded. Revealing his true monkey form, he lifted the brothers onto his shoulders and carried them through the forest to Sugriva's camp on Rishyamukha Hill. Arriving among Sugriva's assembly, Hanuman introduced Rama and explained that he needed help.

I am indeed fortunate,' said Sugriva, rising to greet Rama. 'Here is my hand in token of my friendship, if you will accept it.' Rama gladly clasped Sugriva's hand and warmly embraced him. Then Hanuman lit a fire between the two and together they walked around it to seal their alliance.

We are now united as friends, and our joys and sorrows are one,' declared Sugriva, hugely satisfied. Breaking off a large leafy branch from a nearby tree he offered it to Rama as a seat and sat beside him, while Hanuman did the same, breaking another branch and sharing it with Lakshmana. Sugriva then confided in Rama.

I live in fear of my brother Vali. Please protect me.

Don't worry,' reassured Rama. 'You have my word that I shall hill this Vali and help you recover your wife.

I have some news for you about Sita,' spoke Sugriva. 'I was sitting with four friends on top of the hill some days ago when we saw a strange sight. Passing over us in the air was a princess struggling in the arms of Ravana. As they flew above us she threw down a wrapper containing shining jewels.' He showed Rama the jewels. Instantly recognizing them, Rama could not hold back his tears, and cried, 'My darling!' holding them to his heart.

Tell me where Ravana has taken her and I will send him to his death this very day, he swore.

I do not know where Ravana lives or where he has taken Sita,' confessed Sugriva, but I give you my word that I and my monkeys will find her. Do not give way to this overwhelming grief. As your friend I beg you to be manful and restrain your tears.'

I am thankful for your words of advice,' said Rama. 'You are a true friend in time of need. But tell me, how can I help you?

Sugriva told Rama his story. Vail, his elder brother, son of Indra the Rain god, was ruler of the Vanara kingdom of Kiskindha. One day the demon Mayavi challenged Vali to a duel. Taking Sugriva with him, Vali went to face him, but the demon fled. They gave chase, and Mayavi hid in a deep cave. Ordering his brother to stand guard outside the cave, Vali went in after him. A year passed and still he had not returned, so Sugriva, thinking his brother dead, sealed the mouth of the cave with a large stone and returned to Kiskindha, where he was crowned king in Vali's place. Meanwhile, Vali killed Mayavi and escaped from the cave, arriving back in his kingdom to find Sugriva on the throne. In fury he denounced him, seized his wife and banished him.

Since then I have lived in fear, wandering the forests and hills until I found shelter here in Rishyamukha, the only place where Vali cannot harm me. lie can throw mountain peaks in the air and catch them and tear up large trees at will. But once he fought the demon Dundubhi, killing him by throwing him a distance of four miles. The demon's body landed near this place and splashed blood on the sage Matanga. He was so disturbed by this intrusion that he cursed Vali that if he or any of his monkeys ever set foot here they would be turned to stone. That is why we live here, because it is the only place where we are safe from him. 

Now that you know the strength of Vali, you will surely understand if I doubt whether you are strong enough to oppose him. No one has ever defeated him in combat, so how do I know you can do it? The skeleton of the demon Dundubhi lies nearby. If you can throw it with your foot a distance of one thousand yards, then you may be strong enough.

Rama took up this challenge and, lifting the carcass with his toe, tossed it a hundred miles. But Sugriva was not satisfied.

The carcass is dried up and lighter than when Vali threw it. I have another test for you. Sometimes Vali used to pierce these sal trees to practice his archery, splitting the trunk of a tree in two. If you can do that you are strong enough to defeat him.

Close by were seven sal trees in a row. Rama took an arrow from his quiver and shot it from his bow. It passed through each of the trees in turn, then penetrated the earth as Far as the underworld before bursting out again minutes later and re-entering his quiver. After seeing this feat, Sugriva bowed low in astonishment and was fully convinced of Rama's power to defeat Vali.

Come then,' said Rama. 'Let us go to Kiskindha where you can challenge your brother to a duel.

The Death of Vali

Kiskindha, the capital of the Vanara kingdom, was built around a series of under-ground caves, with carved pillars and cascades of water. Here Vali lived in comfort with his wives. His peace was disturbed by the roaring of Sugriva, who stood outside challenging him to duel, with Rama concealed in the forest nearby.

The two brothers met with a thunderous clash, like Mercury crashing into Mars. Rama, concealed behind a tree, watched closely, his bow at the ready, waiting for an opportunity to strike Vali. But he was baffled. The brothers appeared identical and it was impossible for him to be sure which one was Vali.

Eventually Vali got the upper hand and Sugriva, battered and bleeding, was forced to retreat, running for his life to the safety of Rishyamukha. When Rama returned Sugriva was dismayed.

You encouraged me to fight with Vali,' said Sugriva, 'saying you would kill him. But now I see it is as I feared: you don't have the strength to do it.'

Let me explain,' replied Rama. 'I was unable to tell you and Vali apart and did not dare fire my arrow in case I killed you by accident. Next time you must wear some distinguishing mark.' So Lakshmana made a garland of' flowering creepers and put it around Sugriva's neck, and they went back a second time.

At the entrance to kiskindha, Sugriva let out a roar which split the air, frightening away all the forest animals. In response, Vali shook with rage and prepared to meet him. But his wife, Tara, was anxious.

Quell your anger and don't let yourself be provoked. I feel uneasy about Sugriva coming a second time. I have heard that he has made friendship with Rama, son of the emperor of Ayodhya, who is invincible in battle. My advice is that you abandon this quarrel with your brother. Make him prince regent and give him gifts, and befriend Rama as well.' But Vali, in the grip of fate, did not heed Tara's advice.

Why should I put up with his arrogance?' said Vali. 'And besides, Rama would never harm an innocent person such as me. I will fight again with Sugriva, so long as he stands up to me. He will soon run away again when he feels the blows of' my fists.

So Vali sallied forth, hissing like a snake. His brother Sugriva, shining golden-brown, tightened his cloth and waited for him. The two met once more, colliding like two bulls. Vali smashed Sugriva with his fist, making him vomit blood. Then Sugriva tore up a tree and struck Vali to the ground, making him shake. They locked in combat, each effulgent like the moon and sun in the sky. They fought with tree trunks, boulders, fists, feet, arms and legs, roaming about the forest smeared in blood like two storm clouds.

Vali started to get the upper hand and Sugriva desperately looked around for Rama. Seeing his chance, Rama let loose an arrow tipped with gold and silver. With a thunderous flash it tore into Vali's breast and knocked him to the ground. Uttering a cry of pain, he lay motionless. He was mortally wounded but he still had the strength to speak. He saw Rama with his bow and accused him.

This is a cruel and dishonorable act, to kill someone who was not fighting against you. I never thought you would stoop to attack me in such a way. I did nothing against you. I am an innocent monkey who lived in the forest eating only fruits and roots. Though you are born to be a king, you have no rights over me. You are a ruler of men, whereas I am a beast of the jungle who has done you no harm. What do you have to say in defense of your brutal behavior?' Vali lapsed into silence, his mouth parched and his body racked with pain. Rama answered Vali with respect.

Why do you reproach me? Listen to the reasons for my action. My brother Bharata is emperor of these lands and it is my duty, under his command, to uphold justice throughout his kingdom.

You failed to give due protection to your younger brother, who you should treat as your own son, and moreover, you took his wife, Rama. The punishment for one who has union with his brother's wife while his brother is alive is death.'

These are my reasons for slaying you, as well as to fulfill my word to your brother that I would help him recover his wife and his kingdom. I have acted as law-keeper for your own good, because the religious laws state that a criminal justly punished is absolved of sin and ascends to heaven just as the pious do. Thus I have released you from your sin and I have no regrets over what I have done.

Vail sighed. 'What you have done is correct. I see that you are indeed devoted to the good of all people with a clear and unruffled mind. I beg you to fulfill my last request. Please see that my son Angada, who is still a boy, is reconciled with Sugriva and cared For by him, and see that Sugriva treats my widow, Tara, with kindness.

Do not worry on this score,' Rama reassured him.

Forgive me,' whispered Vali.

Hearing news of' her husband's condition, Tara hurried to him, crying and beating her head in agony. She came upon him lying on the ground like a spent cloud and clasped him to her bosom.

Why don't you speak to me, my great hero? Why does my heart not break into a thousand pieces to see you in this state? You have got your reward for banishing your brother and stealing his wife. If only you had heeded my advice. Here is your son. Come darling Angada, see your father for the last time.

Vali glimpsed his brother Sugriva standing before him.

Forgive me, brother,' he murmured, 'I was carried away by forces out of my control. I am about to leave for the abode of death, and I want you to take the throne and rule over Kiskindha. Please look after my son Angada as if he were your own, and be considerate to Tara and always listen to her advice, for she speaks the truth.' Finally he spoke to his son. 'Accept Sugriva as your protector and serve him with devotion. Do not be over-fond of others nor without affection, but always seek the balance.' With these words Vali breathed his last.

Sugriva was overcome with remorse after hearing his brother's dying words and thought of' ending his own life. in recompense. Tara also wanted to die.

You are wise and patient, she prayed to Rama. 'Please kill me with the same arrow that killed my husband, then I can be reunited with him.

Do not despair,' Rama comforted them, 'for this world is made up of happiness and sorrow in equal measure. Tara, you will yet And happiness under the protection of Sugriva, and your son will be prince regent, therefore do not lament.

Rama then helped them with Vali's funeral. They carried his body in procession to a lonely spot by the river, where a funeral pyre was built and sacred hymns were chanted. As the hills echoed to the crying of his wives and the Vanara women, his body was enveloped in flames and he departed on his long journey to the next world. Rama patiently watched as Sugriva and his companions bathed in the river to purify themselves then came towards him. Hanuman spoke up.

We will now take Sugriva to Kiskindha and crown him. After he has been ceremonially anointed and bathed according to our customs, please come and feast with us in our capital.'

Thank you, Hanuman,' replied Rama, 'but I cannot indulge in the comforts of Kiskindha. I must keep my vow to my father and stay in the forest until my fourteen years are up.

Thus Sugriva, with the help of Rama, got back his wife Rama and his kingdom and lived happily. Meanwhile, the monsoon season began and the rains made it impossible for Rama and his new allies to track down Ravana.

You all enjoy yourselves,' said Rama. 'I will live with Lakshmana in this cave which is dry and airy with a nearby waterfall. In four months, when the rains are over, our search for Sita will begin.

Gathering the Tribes

The rains intensified and Sugriva and Rama retired to their caves: Sugriva to the comfort of the cave-city of Kiskindha, and Rama to his hermit's cave in the forest.

The cave chosen by Rama and Lakshmana was ideal for their needs. It was near the wooded summit of Prasravana Hill, deep and dry and well sheltered from the rain-laden easterly winds. Close by was a rocky pool of lotus flowers and not far away a broad river with sandy banks.

Sitting at the entrance of the cave, Rama looked out through the rain. The earth steamed and dark clouds lashed the mountain sides. The flashes of' lightning inside the dark clouds seemed to him like Sita struggling in the arms of Ravana, and the rain seemed like her tears.

The heat and dust of summer subsided and tracks became muddy and impassable. Mountain streams rushed to the sea, strewn with flowers and reddened by the earth, flocks of swans migrated to their northern homes and flights of' herons flew beneath the clouds pealing with thunder.

Rama lay awake in the moonlit nights thinking of Sita. In the distance he could hear the beating drums and festive singing of the monkeys celebrating Sugriva's victory.

Sugriva is enjoying his change of fortune,' he thought, 'while I have lost everything. But it is not yet time to act. We must wait for the rains to end, when Sugriva will remember his obligation to me.'

After four months Hanuman looked out and saw the sky clear and bright. The rains were over and the time had come to repay the debt to Rama. He went to Sugriva and found him intoxicated in the embrace of his wife Rama.

Do not forget your friend Rama who has done you good service by killing Vali,' reproved Hanuman. 'He is waiting to hear what you are doing to help him find Sita.' Sugriva was stirred into action.

Call for Nila,' he commanded. 'Tell him to muster monkey troops from near and far. All monkey-warriors must be here within fifteen days under pain of' death.' Sugriva then returned to the arms of his mistresses.

But Rama heard nothing. He felt the change of season as the warm autumn nights drew in under a clear sky. He called Lakshmana.

Go and speak with Sugriva. Tell him not to forget that it was I who killed Vali, and warn him that jibe does not help me I am quite capable of killing him too!

Lakshmana set off in earnest to confront Sugriva. As he angrily entered the caves of Kiskindha the guards fled to inform Sugriva of his arrival. Sugriva, however, was in a drunken stupor in the midst of his lovers. Hanuman impressed upon him the seriousness of' the situation.

You have lost track of time. Now go quickly and appease Lakshmana,' he urged.. 'Bow low before him and offer to do whatever Rama pleases.

Lakshmana was ushered into Sugriva's private apartments. He saw beautiful girls decorated with tinkling ornaments. The lovely Tara, now Sugriva's wife, emerged in a languid state, slightly intoxicated with her girdle loosened.

What displeases you, Prince Lakshmana?' she enquired softly.

Your husband appears to have forgotten his duty,' replied Lakshmana. 'For the last four months he has indulged in wine and love-making and seems unaware that it is now time to fulfill his duty to Rama. I have come to remind him.

Please forgive my husband, who forgets the passing of time when under the sway of passion. However, he has already sent for thousands and millions of monkeys, and has quite shaken off his sensuous mood.' Tara beckoned him into Sugriva's presence, where he beheld Sugriva lying like a god on a soft couch embracing Rama and served by young women, his eyes rolling with intoxication. Lakshmana angrily rebuked him. 'You are decadent and ungrateful.

You have accepted Rama's services but have not returned them. Rama wishes me to warn you that if you do not honour your agreement with him you will go the way Vali went.' Sugriva got up quickly, scattering his women like the moon carrying stars in its wake.

Do not speak harshly to my husband,' pleaded Tara, he meant no harm. To please

Rama he would give up his throne and even Rama and myself. He is prepared to kill Ravana, but we must first defeat Ravana's army, which is said to consist of a thousand billion rakshasas. Therefore we have sent for millions of monkeys, baboons and bears From the four quarters to assemble here. Today they are due to arrive.

After Lakshmana had been placated by Tara's words, Sugriva ventured to speak. 'I owe my good fortune to Rama and I will repay him. Ask him to forgive me.' 'Forgive my harsh words, spoken out of concern for Rama,' countered Lakshmana.

Now come with me to reassure him.' 'First I must organize the gathering of' my troops.' Sugriva called again for his commander Nila. 'Send out a second wave of messengers to hasten the mustering of forces from the far-flung mountain ranges of Himalaya, Mahendra, Vindhya, Kailash and Mandara. All must gather here within ten days. Especially attend to those who are sensuous and lazy. Tell them they must obey my royal command or suffer death. In a moment these messengers took to the air. Flying with the speed of mind along the migratory routes of the birds, they fanned out across the world to gather monkeys from seashores, mountains, forests and lakesides.

A vast horde of monkeys assembled black monkeys from Anjana mountain, golden monkeys from the forests of the sunset, monkeys like lions from Kailash mountain, red monkeys from the Vidhya heights, others from the Himalaya range and the shores of the Milk Ocean. When all was in hand Lakshmana took Sugriva before Rama, to whom he bowed low.

Now the time has come for our great adventure,' said Rama.

At this very moment,' announced Dugriva, 'the leaders of' monkeys, bears and baboons are on their way to join us from all over the world, followed by troops numbering thousands of' millions.'

Rama embraced him. As they spoke a dust-cloud rose from all sides veiling the sun The sky darkened and the earth vibrated with the rumble of millions of feet as innumerable monkeys poured into the valley from all sides, led by their illustrious chiefs, each with the power to light single-handedly with the gods. One by one the chiefs came forward to identify themselves to Sugriva and bow to Rama before being assigned a place for their troops.

Now what would you have us do, lord?' asked Sugriva.

First we must find out if Sita is still alive and where she is being held.' said Rama. 'Once we know that, we will decide upon our course of action.

Sugriva called the chiefs together and divided them into four parties, each of which was assigned a different direction: east, south, west and north. They were told to search all the lands as far as the great mountains encircling the earth, beyond which no human or monkey is allowed to pass, and to return within one month. Whoever found Sita was promised ample reward. Among these chiefs, Hanuman was sent south with Angada, son of Vali, Nila, son of the Fire god, and Jambavan, lord of the bears and son of Brahma. Sugriva spoke with Hanuman.

None is your equal, Hanuman. You have the speed and agility of your father, the Wind god. I am relying on you to find Sita.' Seeing Sugriva's confidence in Hanuman, Rama was convinced that he was the one who would find Sita, so he took him aside and spoke with him.

Take this ring inscribed with my name and give it to Sita, so that she will know you to be my servant. Your courage and determination guarantee your success. I am depending on you.

Hanuman took the ring, touched it to his head and then bowed at Lord Rama's feet. Shining like the moon in a clear sky; he set off with the sound of Rama's words ringing in his ears.

The Search for Sita

Once the teams of searchers had been dispatched, Sugriva returned to his life of leisure and Rama to waiting. A month passed and the searchers from the east, north and west returned empty-handed.

We have explored the mountains, forests, rivers and seas. We have ransacked caves and dense thickets, and we have encountered and killed large demons, suspecting them to be Ravana. But we have found no sign of Sitai our only hope now lies with Hanuman.'

Hanuman's party, however, was not to be seen. They had gone south, the direction in which it was known Sita had been carried, over the Vindhya mountains to the desert beyond, which was without water or food. With their strength and hope fading, they criss-crossed the region again and again, finding no trace of' Sita.

When their month was nearly up, exhausted from hunger and thirst, they came to the mouth of a deep cave on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. From inside the cave came a flow of cool, moist air and around its mouth grew dense green foliage.

Herons and swans emerged from the cave, their plumes wet and stained with the red pollen of lotuses. They decided to venture inside the cave in search of water.

Holding hands, they penetrated the darkness. For a long time all was dark as they journeyed ever deeper. Then they saw light ahead and heard the tinkling of running water. They emerged into a cavern illuminated by a clear, soft light where they found trees of gold, mansions of silver and gold, luscious fruits and heaps of gems. Gratefully they satisfied their hunger and thirst and restored their strength and spirits. Then they looked about them and saw the figure of a woman dressed in deer skin and bark, shining with an aura of' saintliness. Hanuman asked her who she was and to whom the cave belonged.

This cave was the home of the demon Maya, who embellished it by his mystic art, but was slain by Indra. I am Svayamprabha, sent here to be its guardian.' Hanuman told her of their search for Sita.

Goddess, our strength is now restored by your generosity. How can we repay you?' 'I want nothing from you, but tell me how I can help you,' she replied.

Show us out of this place. We must return to our king, Sugriva, by the appointed time.' She instructed them to close their eyes and in an instant they were once more in the bright sunlight outside the cave.

As their eyes grew accustomed to the daylight they saw that the season of spring was already far advanced, the trees being heavy with blossom. Fear gripped them as they realized that their allotted month was past. If they returned now, without any news of Sita, Sugriva would kill them.

In despair they decided to fast to death. Weeping, they sat down and prepared to die. However, a more immediate danger faced the monkeys. From far above unseen eyes saw them as a tasty meal sent by providence. Sampati, king of the vultures and older brother of Jatayu, was perched on the mountainside above the monkeys. He had not eaten for a long time, because he was crippled by the loss of his wings. 

I shall eat each of these monkeys one by one as they die of starvation,' he said. The monkeys heard this and looked up to see the huge vulture.

Jatayu, lord of vultures, gave his life for Rama,' protested Angada. 'Must we, who have sacrificed so much in the service of Rama, be eaten by this vulture?' Sampati was bewildered to hear mention of his brother Jatayu, and the name of Rama, who he knew to be the glorious son of Emperor Dasaratha.

Who is it that speaks of Jatayu, my brother, and of Rama, son of Dasaratha? Help me down from my perch so that I may speak with you.

The monkeys, who were past caring, thought they may as well die as food for this venerable vulture as by starvation, so they helped him down. They told Sampati the full story of Sita's abduction, Jatayu's death and the monkey's failure to find Sita and their consequent state of despair. Sampati was distressed to hear of the death of his younger brother Jatayu, and eager to help in the search for Sita.

I will not eat you,' he said. `Instead I can help you find Sita. I once saw from this mountain a beautiful young woman carried through the air by Ravana, calling the names "Rama! Lakshmana!"

This was surely Sita,' exclaimed Hanuman. 'Where did Ravana take her?' 'Ravana lives in the city of Lanka on an island a thousand miles out to sea. Sita is held captive there by Ravana.

On hearing Sampati's information the monkeys leapt to their feet, all thoughts of starvation banished from their minds. Excitedly they took leave of Sampati and made their way to the nearby shore of the Indian Ocean. Looking across the southern sea they saw only the vast expanse of water and their hearts began to sink. How could they cross such a great distance as a thousand miles? Each of them estimated his ability in leaping: some said they could leap one hundred miles, some two, some five hundred, but none felt confident enough to cross to Lanka and back. ‘Jambavan turned to Hanuman, who had kept silent.

You are son of the Wind god and are equal to him in your power to fly through the air. When you were a child you saw the sun rising through the trees and mistook it for a fruit. You leapt into the sky to catch it, rising to a height of twenty thousand miles. In anger at your audacity, Indra hurled his thunderbolt at you and dashed you to the ground, breaking your jaw. Therefore you are called Hanuman, meaning 'one with a broken jaw'. To make up for this Indra blessed you to meet death only when you choose to die, and Brahma made you invulnerable in combat. Now show us your prowess by leaping across the vast ocean to Lanka.

While Jambavan spoke Hanuman shook off his depression and grew to a colossal size. Whirling his tail in delight, he prepared to leap across the ocean.

I can overtake the sun on its journey from east to west, or jump to the very ends of the earth, scattering clouds and shaking mountains. Certainly I will jump to Lanka.

Looking for a secure foothold from which to leap, giant Hanuman climbed the nearby Mount Mahendra. As he trod on it the mountain trembled, releasing new springs and alarming deer and elephants, driving snakes from their holes. Concentrating his mind, Hanuman fixed his thoughts on Lanka and the divine Sita, and prepared to jump.

Writer – Ranchor Prime

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Introduction to Madhubani Paintings

May 23, 2013, 2:47 am

≫ Next: The Tenets and Beliefs of Hinduism

≪ Previous: kishkindha Kanda of Ramayana

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If you look at the map of the world you will not find the village of Madhubani on it. Even if you can trace the contours of the saried woman, which is the shape of Bharat Mata, you will not find the beautiful mole on her face called Madhubani. But if you translate the word Madhubani, you will soon know where it could be. The forest of honey, which is the literal meaning of the name of the village, could be anywhere in the vast landscape of our subcontinent.

Certainly, it was a very apt name in the olden days, when the greater part of our earth was full of dense jungles, in which the folk made little clearings and settled down in the eternal world of birth and rebirth, so they believed, according to their Karma, of good or bad deeds in the past life. The poetical myth, which is enshrined in the name of Madhubani may have been based on reality. In the trees of the forests near the village, the bees may have made beehives. The people may have gathered these hives and extracted from them the honey to sweeten their own lives and those of others. In the feudal centuries, there were terrible hardships in growing grain on small portions of land, with the wooden plough, in good weather and bad. Green harvests depended on the will of the gods. The honey may have been a constant source of happiness. And, in their innocence, they seized upon the perennial source of pleasure as the name of their hamlet.

The innocence, which seems to be obvious in naming the village, is also revealed in the traditional character of the folk of Madhubani. It may have come from a dim sense of the revelation of things from the obscure areas of the heart. This is the way in which men and women become aware of nature, as mother, hear echoes of the emotions they feel, which they put into words to signify the phenomena around them, so that the obscure feelings about the verdant earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, the flora and fauna, may become manifest to them.

But before they pronounce words they make images of their myths, dreams and fantasies. The myth of the name of Madhubani is one of the many fables through which the folk here, as elsewhere, have connected themselves with the cosmos. Some of these legends were invented by the local bards, but many of them were inherited from forefathers, and are part of the oral culture of our peoples, only varied somewhat in the telling, by the salt of the tongue of the teller. 

Actually Madhubani has now become a market town and the village where most of the painters continue to paint is Jitwanpur, about three miles away.

Surrounded by mango and banana groves, the hamlet is outwardly just a typical north Bihar cluster of thatched huts beyond a green pond in which some buffaloes are cooling themselves, while children try to goad them out with little bamboo sticks.

Squatting on the cow dung plastered floors of their houses, some women daily paint pictures, under the shadow of the walls which they painted long ago.

In this and a few other hamlets they have been doing this ritual colour work for generations.

The primary myth about the origin of the world is known to every Hindu villager in Bharat. The Great God, Brahma, was filled with the desire to play. In this mood he played hide and seek with his consort Lakshmi, loved her and created the whole world. So the universe is the soul and body of the Great God.

The early myths of the Rigveda in which the Aryan ancestors had enshrined their poetical reactions, to the surroundings in which they found themselves, have been passed on by word of mouth, by father to son, and mother to daughter, for generations. As the Gayatri hymn to the Sun has been sung for centuries on the banks of the Ganga, not only during festivals, but every morning and every day, Surya has been worshipped through prayers, and also by the way in which the eyes bend down before the refulgent Sun, over joined hands, when Surya appears at dawn to give light, and before he departs into the twilight of the evening. The dawn is an experience for every peasant, who begins the ritual of everyday life by going out into the fields and to the river for his ablutions before sunrise. The god of thunder and lightning, Indra, is welcomed after long months of the parching summer. The moon is watched as it matures from the crescent into the full round shining face of Poornamasi, when the folk dance to celebrate the heightening of the nights to the splendour of golden light.

In this ritual, the aspiration to the connection with the gods becomes a vague sense of connection with the Supreme God from whom men and women are separated. And meditation on the pictures connects.

This urge for connection, for absorption, and salvation, became the curve of the inner journey towards the Self through the outward strayings in the mundane world.

Even before the ardent stirrings in the soul of the Vedic poets, our primitive ancestors had looked for protection to the mother, and there had been evolved the myth of Saranyu, daughter of Tavstar, the god who made the cosmos and all loving things. In the Rigveda she appears as the Goddess who moved at great speed, rushing out of the creator into existence, but going back again to the gods. The name Saranyu means she who runs. She is the pristine goddess, the primary power, who once assumed human shape and became incarnate in other forms. The images of the mother goddess include: Sarama, Saraswati (the mighty river which went underground); Vak the goddess who sings of herself; Aditi the boundless sky, air, mother and father and essence of all the gods and goddesses, the five kinds of being that are born and will be born; the auspicious Lakshmi giving wealth, the lotus-born standing in the lotus, lotus-eyed, abounding in lotuses; Usha, the dawn, the virgin daughter of heaven; Durga, the gracious mother; Kali, the dark flame of fire who consumes the world and existence; and Devi, who takes the innumerable shapes and gives grace to all worshippers.

The mother goddess, in all her exalted incarnations, was worshipped by the folk as a fertility image, as the naked woman with the emphatic pudenda, shown squatting almost in the act of giving birth.

The mythical stories of the heroes and heroines of the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were also inherited by the folk in Madhubani, through the recitation of these narratives during the yearly festivals.

Apart from Rama and Sita, the ideal pair, whose devotion to each other became the symbol of devotion between husband and wife, the hero-god Krishna seems to have been adored in Eastern India, specially as the twelfth century Mithila poet, jayadeva, celebrated the amours of this love god with his consort, Radha, in his Gita Govinda.

The various tales retold in the Puranas, or old books, rendering old stories, became part of the inheritance and fulfilled the desires of many peoples in different ways.

I take the forms desired by my worshippers,' Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita. And there was always an answer in some vital story or the other, to the urge for alliance with the gods, against the dangers, the in clemencies of weather, and the forces of evil and death which may end life.

As the feelings, urges and stirrings towards security, longevity and prosperity, by alliance with spirits, were the curves of desire, but could not be easily fixed in words, so images in clay, in wood, stone and colour began to be made by the folk to define the contours of the wished for spirits. And these figures were often sanctified by prayers and the god or goddess incarnated in the material shapes and worshipped.

The child, or the primitive, creates an image in the likeness of what he or she wishes to become. Words are vague. They only affect the soul where they are rhythmically intoned or rhetorically delivered by an orator, or breathed in magical whispers by a priest into the ear as Sruti, inspired by God. Images are more precise because they are concrete. They picture vibrant feelings, metaphors and recreate myths, so that we may remember the shape, size and texture of the spirit which has hovered over the head, or is moving about in the soul, as a fleeting feeling. When made and put on the mandala and holified by puja, the image as icon affords the worshipper rest in the symbol, against the torment of not being able to connect with a god or goddess through changing emotions. For instance, once the imagination, recalling the memory of thunder and lightning, has conceived the image of the God Indra driving his chariot across the sky, so fast that the wheels create terrible sounds and spread sparks of fire, the spirit of this dynamic god becomes incarnate on a wall when drawn as a concrete expression.

And, then, He is not a mere sound of the rhetorical flourish of a hymn in the Rigveda, but the certainty of the divine presence, liberating the devotee, through expression, or the making of the picture, from the dread of the bursting sky with its loud crackling sounds and its piercing shafts of fire. The religious icon is, therefore, the complement of the poetical metaphor. The first language of the naive mind is in images, which are magical shapes that evoke the protective spirit when beckoned in meditation.

The art of Madhubani is thus mythology. Not art in the sense of 'significant form' of the West. The paintings are legends to which the folk turn to pray in the daily ritual.

The feeling, or energy, or emotion, or invisible stirring, is sought to be imaged as a vital flourish of lines and colours which enshrines the powers of the divinity and can be contemplated with a view to receiving those vitalities into oneself. In fact, the whole basis of Indian creativeness seems to have been to evolve images through which the worshiper desires to become god or goddess.

This kind of transformation of human beings into gods and spirits and demons through idols has, in fact, been the source of all achievements in the arts of the refulgent genius of Indian peoples.

The underlying idea of seeking alliance with the image, is enacted as a drama in a festival like Durga Puja. The images of the Goddess are made by the female folk or by the local craftsmen. They are worshipped during the special festivals, at a particular time of the year. The powers of the goddess are sought to be absorbed in one's own inner life through worship. And then the image is thrown into the river, so that it may become part of the cosmos, to be made again the next year, but leaving the residue of the feeling of its force in the worshipper, so that he or she can turn inwards and recall the image at will. The intention behind the ritualistic use of the icon made the whole tradition of the art of India possible. Every idol is for contemplation, in a dhyanamantra, or is meant to evoke the vision of a concrete divinity, by seeking whose powers, in the grooves of one's person, the awareness of the worshipper can extend itself beyond the everyday round, and thus acquire ineffable devotion to the higher self which may be exteriorised.

This kind of contemplation of a ritual image is quite different from looking at a work of art in the West, except in the early Christian art, where the holy figures were placed in church for bent-head reverence. These images were quite different from the pictures of the Renaissance art. Thus Raphael's Venus, modelled on a beautifully proportioned human female, is supposed to invoke, in the onlooker, the sensuous sense of her chiselled face, her gracious bent neck, volumes of the breasts and the excitations of the naked belly, the shapely hips and legs, as aesthetic delight. There is no doubt that the vision of Venus uplifts the spectator.

But the dramatic composition of Durga, as Mahismardini, showing her slaying the buffalo demon, is supposed to suggest the fight of good against evil, revealing also the power of the goddess, in all the intensity of her destructive force, to ally the worshipper with the protective mother, devotion to whom would quell all those forces which are inimical to life.

If the naturalistic form of Venus arouses mainly the senses, the vision which is behind the creation, destruction and preservation of the world is supposed to be part of the creative intuition of Hindu ritualistic-art-expression in the Mahismardini image of Durga.

We cannot, therefore, equate the rasa, or flavour, which seeps into the devotee, with the aesthetic delight which is the ideal of Western art, though rasa includes appreciation of forms. But it denotes more comprehensive appreciation than the aesthetic term of Clive Bell's 'significant form'.

The creative energies in every work of art, in India, until the end of the mediaeval period, and in rural India until now, were dedicated to self creation, self-perpetuation and self-expression, as a part of the process of increasing awareness and thus to attain insights and heighten consciousness.

As Brahma had created the world, so every human being recreates his or her life, every day of the year.

This recreation takes the form of exalting the house above the decay of the previous day.

The dwelling is swept clean and plastered with the sacred cow dung wash. The rice powder drawing of flowers called alpona is traced by the hand on the threshold, by the mother of the family, the creator, before anyone wakes up.

The water of a holy river or stream is brought and sprinkled all over the house, or the Ganges water, fetched on the last pilgrimage to the mother Ganga, is sprinkled to purify the precincts.

The flowers, which have been brought from the fields, are put before the mandala, on which the favourite gods are arranged in images of stone, metal, or on paper.

The puja or meditational prayer, is then performed by all the members of the family, together or apart.

The incense or dhoop is taken around the house to all the corners, to smoke the evil spirits away.

The first portion of food is sent to the temple for the gods before the family is served the meal.

Almost every act is made holy by the frequent remembrance of the favourite God's name.

In everything, then the empirical Self is related to the higher self. The dream of every man or a woman is to rise above the earthly condition and become a god or a goddess. The family had already exalted every child, male or female, to the status of divinity, by naming the young after the celestials. A boy would be called Shiv Shankar, Krishan Lal or Vishnu Dayal. A girl would be called Savitri Devi, Lakshmi Devi or Parvati Devi.

This exaltation of the human self is integral to all cultures. In almost every part of the world, in all societies, some form of magic making, which is a poetical faculty, has been current. The pantheistic tendency to ascribe a soul to a tree, a bird, a river, a mountain, or a house, can be seen in the most primitive societies.

In India the daily self was reminded every day by the sloka of the Upanishads:

• Whence are we born?
• Whereby do we live??
• On what are we established??? Under whose orders do we suffer pains and pleasures?
• For obviously the ego is not a free agent
• Being under the sway of happiness and misery

This questioning was literally adopted by custom by the folk. Because it was to give a jolt from the habitual life to every person, so that he or she may wonder why we are here and not there, why we were born at all, and who put us here.

The earliest hunches had a vague sense of an omnipotent creator, so the path of meditation was advised by the priest to attain atma-shakti, the cosmic power of the Supreme God, the one cause of all the causes, through the appreciation of the qualities which the creator had imbued in all his creation. To rise from the lowest essence of tamask or crudeness, to rajask or heightening, and satvas or truth, is to emerge from the attachments of the lower life of ignorance, avidya, to illumination, above the decay, to those subtle areas which are beyond the threshold of consciousness.

The tendency to be attached to the world of dailiness, of samsara, has to be got over by discarding the standardised reflections, abhasa, and transcend to the mystery of being, by putting before oneself the image of the god into whose particular incarnation one may aspire to.

In the pursuit of the authentic life, as against the unauthentic habitual existence, everything has to remind the individual of the model of the grace of Vishnu, or the elemental force of Shiva, or the love of Devi.

As the spiritual presence which human beings seek is hidden behind everything, the sense of wonder has to be kept alive and rahasya, or the mystery, revealed. The realisation of the mystery may elevate one to ananda or transcendent bliss.

The painting of the forms of God's creation, or image-making thus become part of a way of life.

The ritual painting is a simple process. Certain symbols had been handed down by tradition. The recreation of those in the alpana of the threshold or on the walls has been repeated day after day without much variation. Perhaps on a festival, the grandmother of the family, or the older aunt, may bring out, from the welter of images, a memory image from her own youth in another village. The form of some flowers, or the vessel in which the flowers are put, may thus become a variation on the old theme.

Occasionally, an individual talent may arise, like the now legendary Sita Devi, a Brahmin widow of three score and seven, who began scribbling in her girlhood. sShe might have been the odd woman out, who dared to dramatise certain forms, was perhaps emboldened, mischievously, to caricature Hanuman, to emphasise his powers and transgress the norms of the routine drawing, with brighter earth colours. She and her youthful companions must have gone to the village fairs, across miles of ploughed fields, along dusty roads to the riverside.

They had sung songs, as they bore the effigies they made of the goddess, after weeks of worship, and then threw them into the Mother Ganga. In the fair were the toys shops, selling images of the gods, and birds and animals, made by village potters, which may have come back as echoes. Then they would have been the itinerant players, enacting the yatra the rural theatrical performance, singing the story of the Ramayana, or the tale from the Mahabharata. And she and her own family would have come back singing songs on the journey back home.

The impressions of the faces of the brides, taken by the mothers-in-law to the fair, would have emerged in the hand of Sita Devi, as the heroine Sita and Rama would be dramatisation of her own husband in the painting she would make.

In talking to Sita Devi, I found that she is a natural naive painter, who has observed the malleable faces of the performers in the yatra, their movements and stances and their tableaux. Her hands move quickly around the circle of sun. She is so fluent in her drawing of curves that she goes on from rounder to rounder. Equally easily, she radiates from the orb little edges of rays, which she slowly embellishes with delicate lines into flower beds. Or she goes to connect the sun-faces, already emergent, with big eyes, and a sacred red mark on the forehead, to symbolic squares for drapery. And then she creates a little universe of lotuses, flame flowers, and peacocks dancing in the garden. One can notice that her dynamic fingers have a natural sense of design. Her eyes are concentrated. And she has immense patience with the minor lines and points, in the morphology of pontillism, which is her unique contribution to the composition. And the binding lines are energised beyond the prototypes.

The impression she gives is that her body-soul creation, is an original rhythm which she has initiated, a unique of Madhubani style of her own.

In so far as the forms recreated by Sita Devi are new beginnings of multiple relations of rounds, squares, triangles, and rhythmic binding lines, in overall patterns, we are struck by the pictures as novelties above the stereotypes.

There are other creative talents in Jitwanpur. In fact, almost every second person in a family paints.

Surya Dev, the son of Sita Devi, learnt from his mother, first by filling in the outlines of her drawings with colours. Since then he has developed a fluent line and can do even large scale paintings. He absorbs impressions from outside Jitwanpur and says he prefers the torried glare of the day, to the night when the monsters of the dark swarm around. He is conscious that he comes from a family of priests who used to perform death ceremonies. Yama is everywhere, he whispers, and must be driven away with all his doots.

A nearby neighbour, Bana Devi paints surrounded by children. Two young girls help her, learning from the elders as in the past. The littlest ones are given paper and colours to play with. They are luckier than Bana Devi, who was married at the age of five and was a maid-of-all-work until she matured and began to earn money with her paintings. Shyly covering her demure round face, she concentrates on a smiling moustached sun, obviously an ambivalent symbol of happiness itself, the protective father image.

A perceptive collector discovered some Harijan painters. In the pictures of these 'lower' peoples, the deities and the victims coincide.

All the painters are aware that the loving adoration of the preferred spirits liberates them through the recreation of the traditional myth as a personal myth. Besides, there are the incipient urges to rise above the dailiness of ploughing, washing, cooking and doing the chores, in the seemingly changeless samsara, to authentic life of the future from the urgency to be immortal.

In the deeper layers of such creativeness, is the intent to offer the sacrifice of one's self to the gods. It is conceivable that though the ancient Aryan Yajnas or self sacrificial ceremonies by burning clarified butter, so that the heat of the passion should rise to the heavens and the earth be purified.

Racial memory gave place to image worship. The instinctive urge to go to pray was transformed into the struggle to beckon the gods. And the energies of the body-soul were sacrificed in the magical act of drawing, painting or sculpting.

This struggle to invoke the spirits seems to have become a racial characteristic. Not only the Brahmin members of the hierarchy paint pictures in Madhubani, but the people of the lowest caste, also indulge in such symbolic expressionism.

And, curiously, the same family gods and goddesses appear in Harijan paintings as in the free-hand work of the 'twice born'. The sameness of the theme confirms the process of hieratic art, as also it emphasises the notion that the Harijans are also offering prayer and sacrifice as part of the fourfold Hindu order, even though they are considered beyond the pale, because of the menial work which is their function.

Actually, if we go to the sources of creativeness in our civilisation, we find that the gods and goddesses being our own higher incarnations and near neighbours, the invocation of them is a purely human act, subject to no other law, except the vitality of the rhythmic impulse which creates forms in different proportions, contours, with emphasis on colours according to the individual talent of the painter.

Thus though the family gods are the same, because of mythical contours of divinities are fixed, the forms by the 'upper' hierarchy are thinner and the colours of the 'lower' peoples are thicker. The lines of the former are more curved, while sharp triangular lines are visible along with roundings in the latter. The Brahmin paintings tend to be decorative, while the Harijan works are more expressionist and passionate.

If on the surface the symbols of both strains are similar, the thickening of tones in the works of the Harijans imparts a certain vitalism to their compositions. The dark necessities from which thick paints are imparted seem to inspire in men and women, urges towards freedom of action beyond the oppression of millenniums. It seems that each God forgotten by the God-forsaken is being recalled, in all innocence, perchance He may deliver the Harijans by the renewal of their faith in Him.

In every creation of man there is implicit the ambiguity of the relationship between the originator and his work. While the painter may be revealing the mysterious idol in a recognisable shape, the bent of his own empathy turns or twists the forms.

Unlike other folk of other areas, the Madhubani painters, both Brahmins and Harijans, venture into the realm of the gods, to dissolve their fears in the continuous resurgence of the hope of receiving from the beneficent holies, for their body-souls, a certain depth in which may be resolved the daily predicament of being-in-this-world situation.

If the creations of the craftsmen of the courts lapsed, because there was no patronage left after the alien impacts, the arts of everyday life of the folk have, fortunately, survived wherever the myths of a faith are sung or recited or enacted in dance-dramas.

This organic relationship between the performing arts and the visual expression in images must be noticed as an important departure point in the making of images. In eastern India and in Rajasthan scrolls were taken in procession and unfolded before the folk with the myth or legend recited.

The core of the relationship is in the connection with the old symbols, which die from repetition and must be made alive, to appease the makers and the onlookers, through the battlements, the miseries and the challenges of the daily life. The personal recollection of a moral tale is, indeed, a repetition of an eternal human attitude, accepted in uncritical, blind worship, in answer to every baffling new situation. But the drums and cymbals renew the memory and make for the warmth of a living connection between the worshipper and the god, even in the shells of the old fables.

The folk in a village find that they have to survive in the hamlet on their own mental and physical resources. Some of the questions of the daily life have been answered in the recitals. All the desires, emotions, frustrations, aspirations, lusts, greeds, jealousies, have been expiated in the myths about the gods, who were originally based on heroes or exalted fantasies of behavior, which were models of angels against the evil demons. And behind the gods, there is lurking, always, the Supreme God, the exalted, the unreachable, the impenetrable, who has inspired the essence of the good, the beautiful and truthful in all creatures from which they can hark back in yearnings and desire, which become myth, and which are the means of reaching him in moments of ecstasy that is to say in being oneself.

The sources of folk art of Madhubani lie on the dim areas of silence, of the approximation to the heightened moments of creation itself.

Writer – Mulk Raj Anand

The Tenets and Beliefs of Hinduism

May 24, 2013, 2:15 am

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Hinduism, as we have seen, has a wealth of scriptures to guide both the initiate and the scholar. We now come to some of the fundamental tenets of the religion, as given in these scriptures.

Nirguna Brahman, the Absolute

The first question the Hindu is asked is whether he believes in God. Verily Hindus believe in the One God, Who, in His highest form is known as the Brahman, the Absolute, or the Universal Soul. He is imminent within and about us, as also transcendent, outside material existence, transcending Time and Space. He is Nirguna, or without shape and form, and without beginning or end.

To explain that God exists and is reality, we have, in the Chandogya Upanishad, the illuminating story of the young Svetaketu's discussions on the Brahman with his father, Uddalaka Aruni, when he wanted to know where there was proof that God, who is not visible, really exists.

The father asked his son to get a fruit from the great nyagrodha (banyan) tree and to break it open. Taking one of the tiny seeds inside the fruit, he asked him to split it further, but young Svetaketu found nothing inside the seed. Yet, the father explained to him, inside the seed, not visible to the eye, is something out of which grows the mighty banyan tree. That same great power pervades the entire universe. It may not be seen, but It exists.

Uddalaka further asked his son to mix salt in water. After it had dissolved, he asked Svetaketu to taste the different parts of the water in the bowl and to separate the salt from the water. The son found all parts of the water equally salty and pointed out that the salt could not be separated from the water.

Uddalaka explained to Svetaketu that just as the salt pervades every drop of water in the cup, the Universal Spirit pervades all life.

Uddalaka also pointed out to his son that, just as the salt cannot be separated from the water, when finally all beings merge with the Brahman, they lose their individual entities, as the separate waters of rivers lose their separate forms when they flow into the ocean. Individuals may die but the Universal Spirit is deathless and life itself therefore does not die.

The Upanishads therefore teach us that the whole Universe is a manifestation of the Brahman. Life in all its forms is evolved from this single source of Energy, the Universal Spirit, which pervades all life and all things animate and inanimate. Since It is Nirguna or formless, the Brahman is not considered either male or female and is referred to by the impersonal pronoun, Tat (meaning That).

The Brahman is also described as "Satchitananda". Sat is that which exists (Being), Chit is pure intelligence (Consciousness), and Ananda is pure joy (Bliss).

All meditation begins with the words, "Om Tat Sat", to remind us of the only Ultimate Reality, the Brahman, which is the highest intelligence and is supreme bliss.

The mystic syllable, "OM" (pronounced "Ohm"), is known as the Pranava and is the symbol of the Brahman. This sacred word encompasses in itself the whole universe, the past, present and future and goes beyond the periphery of Time itself. Being the symbol of the Brahman or the Universal Soul, it is the very essence of all that is sacred in Hindu thought. It is used at the beginning of meditation, at the beginning and end of prayer, during the practice of Yoga, in fact at all times when the thought of the Brahman pervades one's being.

Writer – Shakunthala Jagannathan

Pallava Emperor "Seventh to Ninth Century A.D."

May 25, 2013, 3:27 am

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The Pallavas of Kanchi represent an early dynasty in South India. Simhavishnu's son Mahendravarman I was the king of this line who first introduced rock-cut architecture in the Tamil area. Mahendravarman descended from the Vishnukundins through his mother. As a young prince, Mahendravarman was no doubt impressed by the art of the Vishnukundins at Vijayawada. This should account for the great similarity between the rock-cut temples at Mogalrajapuram and those of Mahendravarman in the Tamil country. His famous inscription at Mandagapattu etad anishtakam adru man alauhain asudham vichitrachittena nirmapitam nripena brahmesvaravishnulakshitayatanam shows that for the first time the rock-out temple was achieved without the necessity of erecting a shrine with bricks, wood, metal or mortar.

The king bore such titles as Vichitrachitta the curious art-minded one, Chitrakarapuli a tiger among painters, Mattavilasa, Chaityakari and so forth. His titles suggest his artistic taste. He was an architect, an engineer, a poet an artist all in one. His son Narasimhavarman I, who was probably amongst the greatest conquerors of his day and ranked with Pulakesin and Harsha, his two great contemporaries, created monuments that are even .today gazed on with wonder by connoisseurs. Towards the end of the seventh century, the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram was constructed by another great Pallava king, Rajasimha, who was aided in this by his art-minded queen, Rangapataka. The paintings in the monuments of this king give us splendid examples, though not many, of the Pallava phase of painting.

The traces of line and colour in cave temples like those at Mamandur show what a great phase of painting of the time of Mahendravarman is now almost lost. In the structural Pallava temples at Panamalai and Kanchipuram, there are fragments which give us a glimpse of the development of painting a few decades after Mahendravarman. These were discovered by Professor Dubreuil. The beautiful goddess, with a crown on her head and umbrella held over her, from Panamalai, the charming remains of a princely figure and a Somaskanda from two of the cloister cells surrounding the courtyard of the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram, show the painter's art of Rajasimha's time.

Though fragmentary, the painting representing Somaskanda has still enough to indicate the wonderful flourish in the lines composing figures of seated Siva and Parvati with baby Skanda in the centre and the gana follower of Siva on one side at his foot and a charming attendant of Parvati beside her at the edge of her seat. When we recall that the Somaskanda theme was a great favourite in Pallava art and that this is the only representation of it in a painting, preserved for us of this period, we may very well appreciate how important this is for a study of Pallava art. It is a lovely theme of a fond parent and frolicsome child, of the ideal mates and the object of their love, philosophy of affection spent on the offspring but increasing ever more.

The lines composing these figures are fragmentary and yet there is enough left in them to make out the Somaskandagroup. Siva is seated, his right leg lowered down and the left bent on the seat. The jatamakuta is lost, the curve of the face and the ear-lobes suggest what a beautiful part has been lost. The torso shows the perfection of con-tour at its best, the upper hands are more suggestive than complete; but the lovely palm of the lower left nestling on the lap makes up for all that is lost of the lower right of which the fingers alone remain. The yajnopavita flowing in a curve and hanging in tassels is matched only by the elaborate girdle and the pleasing folds of the silken garments. Keyuras, wristlets and udarabandha complete a most pleasing arrangement of jewelry. The baby beside him, Skanda,is a noble representation of the age of innocence. A tiny coronet adorns the juvenile head. From his mother's lap, he looks at his father meaningfully. The mother of this pretty little child is a painter's dream, a marvel of brush work, a delicate subject treated softly and sweetly. She is seated on a couch with her right leg on her seat and the left hanging down to rest on a cushioned footstool which is lost. The face of Uma is obliterated and we can only imagine its beauty with a gem-decked crown and a flower-filled braid. Her right hand caresses the child, the left rests on the seat.

The full breasts, the attenuated waist and the broad hips supply a contour to the form that idealises feminine grace. The pendant, which is all that is left of a necklet, is in a place where beauty of form beautifies beauty of ornament. Armlets and various types of bracelets are present. The elaborate girdle with its manifold tassels flowing down the sides of the couch like tiny silver streamlets descending in little cascades is a piece of work of which any master would be proud. The silken garment worn by the goddess shows a pleasing pattern worked on it. At their feet on either side, an attendant is shown, the one nearer Siva, uddhata or forceful and the other nearer Uma, lalita or soft type. There is a strange tinge of intelligence and calm in the gana nearer Siva and a soft look may be seen in the sweet face of the one near the Lord's consort.

Writer C. Sivaramamurti 

The Literary and Religious Background of painting

May 27, 2013, 3:40 am

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India has a tradition of love poetry stretching back almost to the age of the Vedas. In its earlier phase it found expression in Sanskrit and later on in Prakrit and Hindi. The love charms of the Atharva are said to mark the beginning of erotic poetry. In the Rigveda, Usha, the goddess of Dawn, is compared to a maiden who unveils her bosom to her lover. This was a period when Sanskrit was the living language of a virile people and had not fossilised into a language of the learned. In Valmikes Ramayana, the dawn is treated as a loving maiden: `Ah that the enamoured twilight should lay aside her garment of sky, now that the stars are quickened to life by the touch of the rays of the dancing moon'.

Among the earliest specimens of Sanskrit kavya are the works of the Buddhist poet and philosopher, Asvaghosha (c. A.D. 100). His poem, the Saundarananda, deals with the legend of the conversion of his half-brother, Nanda, by the Buddha. In canto iii, the poet describes the beauty of Sundari, Nanda's wife and compares her to a lotus pond, with her laughter for the swans, her eyes for the bees, and her swelling breasts for the uprising lotus buds. The perfection of her union with Nanda, he describes as of the night with the moon. 

The Hindu Sritigara literature, both in Sanskrit and Hindi, has its roots in Bharata's Natyagastra, a treatise on dramaturgy. Poetry, music, and dance were necessary components of a Hindu drama, and as such the book deals also with poetics, music and the language of gesture. According to Manmohan Ghosh, the available text of the Natyagastra existed in the second century A.D., while the tradition which it recorded may go back to a period as early as 100 B.C. It is composed in verse in the form of a dialogue between Bharata and some ancient sages. Apart from Sanskrit, the Natyagastra also gives examples of Prakrit verses. It is the earliest writing on poetics, contains discussion on figures of speech, mentions the qualities and faults of a composition, and describes varieties of metre. In relation to ars amatoria it mentions Kamasasra and Kamatantra, but there is no reference to Vatsyayana's Kamasatra, which was composed much later.

The doctrine of rasa or flavor, and bhavas or emotions, was also enunciated in the Natyasastra. As the tastes of food are produced by salt, spices or sugar, the dominant states (sthayibhava), when they come together with other states (bhava) become sentiments. As an epicurean tastes food by eating, so learned people taste in their mind the dominant states or sentiments. The aesthetic experience is described by Bharata as the tasting of flavour (rasasvadana), the taster is rasika, and the work of art is rasavant. Of the eight emotional conditions, the sringarrasa, or erotic flavour, whose underlying emotions are love or desire, is the most important. It is the erotic sentiment which is the basis of the most beautiful art, whether poetry or painting.

The subtle classification of woman according to mood, sentiment and situation, called mayika-bheda, which was refined and elaborated by a succession of poets and rhetoricians, also has its origin in the Natyasastra. The eight-fold classification of heroines or nayikas is given, and female messengers, their qualities and functions are described. This is followed by the theme of mana and mana-mochana.

Sanskrit was no longer a spoken language by the close of the first century A.D. The languages of the people were Prakrits which at later stages evolved into the modern regional languages. Lyric poetry found its first and best expression in the Prakrits. 'One reason for the excellence of these little poems', says Grierson, 'is their almost invariable truth to nature, and the cause of this is that from the first they have been rooted in village life and language, and not in the pandit-fostering circles of the towns." The oldest and most admired anthology is the Sapta-sataka or the Seven Centuries of Hala, who flourished somewhere during the period A.D. 200 to 450 in Maharashtra. There are charming genre pictures, describing the farmers, hunters, cowherds and cowherdesses in these Prakrits lyrics. Hala's poetry is close to the soil and the people of the land. There are vivid pictures of nature and the seasons. Bees hover over flowers, peacocks enjoy the rain-showers while the female antelope seeks her mate longingly. The grief of a woman waiting for her lover is thus described:

"Waiting for you, the first half of the night

passed like a moment. 

The rest was like a year, 

for I was sunk in grief."

The prevailing tone is gentle and pleasing', observes Keith, 'simple love set among simple scenes, fostered by the seasons, for even winter brings lovers close together, just as a rain-storm drives them to shelter with each other. The maiden begs the moon to touch her with the rays which have touched her beloved; she begs the night to stay for ever, since the morn is to see her beloved's departure.

Sanskrit, though it continued as the language of literature for a long time, reached its zenith in the period from the fifth to seventh centuries. In the sensuous poems of India's greatest poet, Kalidasa (fl. 5th century A.D.), Sanskrit romantic poetry reaches its most elegant expression.

In the Sringarasataka or Century of Love of Bhartrihari (fl. 7th century A.D.), are brilliant pictures of the beauty of women, and of the joys of love in union. There are two other centuries of verses by him, viz. the Century of Worldly Wisdom, and the Century of Renunciation. The titles of his collections of poems also reflect the fickleness of the author who seven times became a Buddhist monk and seven times relapsed into worldly life. He regards woman as poison enclosed in a shell of sweetness, and considers her beauty a snare which distracts man from his true goal, which is the calm of meditation. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that the best life is one of solitude and contemplation:

"When I was ignorant in the dark night of passion

thought the world completely made of women,

but now my eyes are cleansed with the salve of wisdom,

and my clear vision sees only God in everything." 

In the seventh century flourished Mayura, who was a contemporary of Harsha-vardhana. He thus describes a young woman who is returning after a night's revel with her lover: 'Who is this timid gazelle, burdened with firm swelling breasts, slender-waisted and wild-eyed, who hath left the startled herd? She goeth in sport as if fallen from the temples of an elephant in rut. Seeing her beauty even an old man turns to thoughts of love."

Amaru who flourished between 650 and 750 A.D. describes the relation of lovers in his Century of Stanzas, the Amarusataka. The relations of lovers, which later writers of poetics described in the form of Ashtanayikas, and Mana are delightfully narrated in his gay verses.

Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, which is probably older than Kalidasa, was studied eagerly by the Sanskrit poets along with grammar, lexicography and poetics. Sriharsha, the author of the Naishadhacharita, who flourished in the second half of the twelfth century at Kanauj, shows a good knowledge of the Kamasutra, while describing the married bliss of Nala and Damayanti. The Vaishnava Movement The eleventh century witnessed a great popularity of the Vaishnava movement. In the field of literature, Prakrits, and later on regional languages, replaced Sanskrit. The herald of the new dawn was a South Indian saint, Randnuja (1017-1137), who is regarded as one of the great apostles of Vaishnavism. He was born in the village of Sri-perambudur in Madras State. He mastered the Vedas, and wrote commentaries on the Vedanta-sutras and the Bhagavad-Gita. He popularised the worship of Vishnu as the Supreme Being.

Jayadeva, the author of the Gita Govinda, and the court poet of Lakshmanasena (1179-1205), was the earliest poet of Vaishnavism in Bengal. He wrote ecstatically of the love of Radha and Krishna, in which was imaged the love of the soul for God, personified in Krishna. The poem is regarded as an allegory of the soul striving to escape the allurement of the senses to find peace in mystical union with God. Hence arose a doctrine of passionate personal devotion, bhakti or faith towards an incarnate deity in the form of Krishna and absolute surrender of self to the divine will.

It was Eastern India, the provinces of Bihar and Bengal, which became an important centre of the Radha-Krishna cult. Vidydpati (fl. 1400-1470), the poet of Bihar, wrote in the sweet Maithili dialect on the loves of Radha and Krishna. He was the most famous of the Vaishnava poets of Eastern India. He was inspired by the beauty of Lacchima Devi, queen of his patron, Raja Sib Singh of Mithila in Bihar. There is a tradition that the Emperor Akbar summoned Sib Singh to Delhi for some offence, and that Vidyapati obtained his patron's release by an exhibition of clairvoyance. 

The incident is thus narrated by Grierson: 'The emperor locked him up in a wooden box, and sent a number of courtesans of the town to bathe in the river. When all was over he released him and asked him to describe what had occurred, when Vidyapati immediately recited impromptu one of the most charming of his sonnets, which has come down to us, describing a beautiful girl at her bath. Astonished at his power, the emperor granted his petition to release Sib Singh. In the love-sonnets of the great master-singer of Mithila we find sacredness wedded to sensuous joy. There are vivid word-pictures of the love of Radha and Krishna painted in a musical language. Coming direct from the heart they remind us that there is nothing so beautiful and touching as sincerity and simplicity.

A contemporary Of Vidyapati was Chandi Das who lived at Nannara in Birbhum district of West Bengal. 'Representing the flow and ardour of impassioned love', says Dineshchandra Sen, 'he became the harbinger of a new age which soon after dawned on our moral and spiritual life and charged it with the white heat of its emotional bliss II His Krishtiakirtana describes the love of Radha' and Krishna in different phases. Chandi Das had fallen in love with a washerwoman, Rami by name, and in describing the physical charm of Radha, and her behaviour, he was drawing upon his own experience. With what passion he describes the pursuit of Radha by Krishna amidst market places, groves and the gay scenery along the bank of the Yamunal In the poems of Chandi Ds, sensuous emotions are sublimated into spiritual delight. The pleasures of the senses find an outlet in mystic ecstasy.

Writer – M.S. Randhawa

The Mughal School Painting

May 28, 2013, 3:06 am

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In 1526 Babur, a minor prince from Transoxiana descended from both Tamerlane and Chingiz Khan, culminated a lifetime of restless wanderings and short-lived conquests by invading India. He founded a dynasty whose autocratic power and luxurious display became proverbial as far away as England. Although its decline was to be lengthy, it endured in name at least until the banishment of the last Emperor by the British in 1858. For much of this period the cultural interests and fashions of the imperial court exercised a pervasive influence throughout the provinces, and not least on the art of painting.

Babur himself died in 1530, soon after his conquest. He is not known to have patronised painting during his turbulent career, but he did leave behind a remarkable volume of memoirs, whose observations of man and nature reveal an original and inquiring mind. During the reign of his bookish and ineffectual son Humayun (153o-56) the still insecure empire was lost for a time to the Pathan chief Sher Shah. Humayun was driven into exile at the court of Shah Tahmasp of Persia, who, after a carefree youth distinguished by inspired artistic patronage, was turning towards religious orthodoxy and a greater attention to matters of state. Humayun was thus able to take two of the finest Persian painters, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd us-Samad, into his service. They accompanied him on his re-turn to Delhi in 1555, where he died only a few months later after a fall on his library staircase.

The achievement of consolidating the empire and shaping its distinctive cultural traditions belonged to Akbar (1556-1605), the third and greatest of the Mughal emperors. He possessed not only the mental acuteness of Babur but an all-embracing imperial vision and colossal physical energy with which to fulfil it. By arms and diplomacy he extended the empire and made allies of the powerful Rajputs. More than any earlier Muslim ruler, he had a receptive and tolerant intellect. Many of his generals, courtiers, wives, poets and artists were Hindus. His strong religious experiences led him to an open-minded debate with representatives of all the known faiths, including Zoroastrians, Jews and Jesuit priests. Disappointed by the animosity of these clerics, he typically chose to found an eclectic and short-lived religion centred on his own person.

Painting at Akbar's court reflected a similar forcible and dynamic synthesis between the disparate cultures of Persia, India and Europe. Akbar had himself received training from his father's two Persian masters, but the delicate refinement of the Safavid manner did not satisfy his youthful exuberance. 

Early in his reign he set the two Persians to direct a newly recruited studio that grew to some two hundred native artists. Under his constant supervision the early Mughal style was thus formed from the fusion of Persian elegance and technique with the Indian vitality and feeling for natural forms admired by Akbar. The studio's most grandiose project, taking fifteen years to complete, was a series of 1400 large illustrations on cloth to the romance of Amir Hamza, a prolix but action-packed adventure story which was a favourite of the young Akbar. Accord-ing to one Mughal historian he would himself act as a story-teller, narrating Hainza's adventures to the inmates of his zenana (harem). In a typical, the decorative Persian tile patterns and arabesques stand in contrast to the vigorously painted trees, rocks, gesticulating figures and gory victims of the leering dragon.

By the time of the Hanizanama's completion in the late 157os, the Akbari style was reaching its maturity. A stream of smaller and less copiously illustrated manuscripts of Persian prose and verse classics was produced in a blander but more integrated idiom. In the last twenty years of Akbar's reign his interest turned to illustrated histories of his own life and those of his Timurid ancestors. At least five copies of Babur's memoirs were made, as well as three of the Akbarnama, Abtel Fazl's official history of his reign. As unequivocal propaganda, these and other commissions formed part of his imperial design, for they documented and legitimised what was in Indian terms still only a parvenu dynasty. The artists were more than ever required to record the court life around them in a spirit of dramatic realism. It is unlikely that the painter Khem Karan would have witnessed the siege of the Rajput fortress of Ranthainbor some twenty years previously, but his portrayal of Akbar, dressed in white, directing the attack from a promontory set against a hazy sky is a convincing presentation of the event. 

That this realism was to some extent based on a selective study of European models is shown by an illustration to the Harivamsa, one of the Hindu mythological texts which Akbar had ordered Badauni to translate into Persian, to that scholar's pious disgust. Krishna sweeps down on the bird Garuda to triumph over Indra on his elephant, watched by gods and celestial beings. The billowing clouds and swirling draperies have Baroque antecedents, while the coastal landscape with a European boat derives from Flemish art. Abu'l Fazl, besides echoing his master's praise of Hindu artists, whose 'pictures surpass our conception of things', refers also to 'the wonderful works of the European painters, who have attained world-wide fame'. He more-over tells us of an album prepared for Akbar which contained portraits of himself and his courtiers. This was the first time in Indianart that portraiture of the Western type, treating its subject as an individual character rather than as a socially or poetically determined type, had been so systematically pursued.

In the reign of Jahangir (16o5-27) the imperial studio was reduced to an elite group of the best painters, who attended the Emperor both in court and camp to carry out his commissions. Manuscript illustration gave way to the production of fine individual pictures, whose subject matter reflected Jahangir's enthusiasms and foibles. Jahangir was a fickle character, capable both of generosity and cruelty. Inheriting a well established empire, he never developed Akbar's gifts as a statesman, and as his prodigious consumption of opium and alcohol gradually enfeebled him, the administration passed out of his hands. He also lacked Akbar's profound religious sense, being guided instead by a highly developed aestheticism. As a connoisseur of the arts, he boasts justifiably in his memoirs of his ability to distinguish even tiny details painted by different artists. 

He was also passionately curious about the forms and behavior of plants and animals, and it has been remarked that he might have been a better and happier man as the head of a natural history museum. When in 1612 a turkey cock was brought in a consignment of rarities purchased from the Portuguese in Goa, Jahangir as usual wrote up his observations, being particularly fascinated by its head and neck: 'like a chameleon it constantly changes colour'. His flower and animal artist, Mansur, known as 'Wonder of the Age', recorded the new specimen, rendering each feather and fold of skin with minute brushwork, against a plain background relieved only by (discoloured) streaks and a conventional row of flowers.

The same qualities of dispassionate delineation and static, pattern-making composition informed the now dominant art of portraiture. Jahangir was proud of his artists' ability to emulate the technique of the English miniatures shown to him by the ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, and was delighted when Roe was at first unable to distinguish between an original miniature and several Mughal copies. The effect on Mughal painting was both refining and somewhat chilling. A scene of Jahangir receiving his son Parviz and courtiers in durbar has been skilfully assembled from individual portrait studies and stock pictorial elements such as the fountain, the simplified palace architecture, the cypress and flowering cherry' and the Flemish-inspired landscape. 

In this deliberate compilation there is none of the movement and interaction of figures of Akbar painting. Each finely portrayed face gazes forward in expressionless isolation an attitude which is, however, appropriate for the solemn formality of the durbar. The painting can be attributed to Manohar, the son of the great Akbari artist Basawan, who had developed a vigorous modelling technique and sense of space from European sources. In deference to Jahangir’s taste, these skills were modified by his son, who presents the outward show of imperial life, crystallized in elegant patterns and richly detailed surfaces.

Court portraiture under Shah Jahan (1627-58), exemplified by the Padshahnama, the illustrated history of his reign now at Windsor Castle, and became still more formal and frigid. Each durbar, battle or procession is a grand compilation of countless individual portraits, painted with a hard, immaculate finish. The effect is magnificent but heartless and strangely unanimated. Shah jahan's real passion Was for jewels and architecture: on these he lavished much of the wealth of the empire, combining them above all in the justly celebrated Taj Mahal. Album paintings of varied subjects were, however, still produced, such as a genre scene of an informal musical party by Bichitr, an artist best known for his accomplished portraiture and cool palette. The painting is in fact an exercise in the style of Govardhan, another Hindu and one of the most gifted of all Mughal painters, excelling at keenly observed group portraits of common people and particularly of holy men as well as kings.

In 1658 Shah Jahn was deposed by his third son, the pious and puritanical Aurangzeb, and Dara Shikuh, the more free-thinking and artistically inclined heir apparent, was put to death. During his long reign (1658-1707) Aurangzeb further dissipated the empire's resources, not like his father by immoderate luxury and building projects, but by interminable military campaigns in the Deccan. The court arts languished for want of patronage, and from 168o onwards many painters took service at provincial courts. A urangzeb was followed in the 18th century by a succession of effete incompetents who maintained an illusory show of power while the empire broke up. The sybaritic Muhammad Shah (1719-48), who when told of some defeat would console himself by contemplating his gardens, was typical of the age. In 1739 he endured the humiliating sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah of Persia. A nautch (dancing-party) scene in his zenana shows signs of the brittle rigidity and vapid sensuality of late Mughal painting, which preserved much of the technique of the mid-17^th century style, but had little new to say. The emperors after Akbar had insulated themselves within the increasingly formal and introverted microcosm of court life. 

Given inspired patronage, painting had for a time flourished in this hot-house atmosphere, but when the empire was played out it too gradually declined into a repetition of well worn themes, both at Delhi and at the provincial courts of Lucknow and Murshidabad. After Clive's victory in Bengal in 1757, British power began to spread across northern India, and by the early 19th century Delhi artists were emulating the style of painting favoured by the new imperialists. A nautch party of this period is set in a European mansion with classical columns and pediments. The figures also arc in the Europeanised 'Company' style, but the Indian artist has, resourcefully as ever, transformed the alien conventions of modelling and recession into his own umistakable idiom.

Writer – Andrew Topsfeld

Rajasthani Painting

May 29, 2013, 2:20 am

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Because of its unique geographical, historical and cultural background, Rajas-than has earned much fame. On one hand, there are the high peaks of the Aravalli Hills, valleys with green vegetation and the beauty of nature, while on the other hand are large expanses of desert.

In the annals of Indian history, this territory had ever belonged to brave men and dedicated women. Different tribes, their way of living, style of dress, and cultural charm are unique and colourful. In one direction are the impregnable forts of Ranthambor, Chittor and Jaisalmer, while in another are the ancient and artistic temples of Dilwara, Ranakpur, Mandore, Paranagar and Badoli.

In a third direction tall palaces and other buildings, symbols of feudal glory, exist. In still another are huts built according to folk art style and belonging to Bhil tribes, Meenas and Girasias. Public figures decked out in colourful costumes are another highlight of this state. Architecture, iconography, music, literature and paintings of this region possess significant characteristics. Rajasthan is undoubtedly a glorious land of artists.

In the domain of world painting India occupies a unique and honourable place. Buddhist and Jain art in the styles of Pal, Gujarat, Apbhransh-Rajasthani, Mughal and Pahari have ever kept intact the traditions of Indian painting since the 2^ndcentury A.D. till the present day. In this series of paintings Rajasthani art, adopting the traditions of Ajanta has developed its own unique cultural perspective and history.

Nomenclature

With regard to the nomenclature of Rajasthani painting, scholars hold varied opinion. Some call it Rajput painting and others Rajasthani painting. Ananda Coomaraswamy was the first scholar who scientifically classified Rajasthani painting in his book titled Rajput Painting in 1916.

According to him, the theme of Rajput painting relates to Rajputana and the hill states of Punjab. He divided it into two parts, Rajasthani concerning Rajputana and Pahari relating to the hill states of Jammu, Kangra, Garhwal, Basohli, Chamba. The administrators of these states, often belonging to the Rajput clan, had termed these paintings Rajput.

According to Coomaraswamy, Rajasthani painting spread widely from Bikaner to the border of Gujarat and from Jodhpur to Gwalior and Ujjain. Amber, Aurachha, Udaipur, Bikaner and Ujjain had earned the reputation of being centres of artistic activities. But contrary to this view, Raikrishan Dass opines:

Dr Swami had classified traditional Indian painting in two parts, the Rajput and Mughal styles, but there is no substance in identifying it as Rajput style. Even though the Rajputs were a ruling class, the cumulative effect of such a clan could not influence the style of art which had different centres in the whole country.

Basil Grey comments: "Rajputana has been a centre of diverse princely indigenous states, but the expansion of Rajasthani painting had taken place from Bundelkhand to Gujarat and states ruled by Pahari Rajputs, that is why the name Rajput painting seems plausible."' Vachaspati Garrola had recognised only Rajasthani painting under the auspices of the Rajput style of painting, which seems to be more ambiguous.

According to these arguments, all paintings of the Rajasthani school could be placed under the Rajput style. The region termed Rajputana under British rule has after independence been named Rajasthan with little variation. Before the advent of the British this whole state could have been known by a single name, but no substantial evidence could be produced to uphold this view. Only Col Tod named this region Rayathan or Rajasthan. But British officers often used to call it Rajputana. Hence we treat Rajasthani painting as that style which is an eternal heritage of this state. Many connoisseurs of art who had given this style various names like Raikrishan Dass, Ram Gopal Vijayavargia, Karl Khandalawala, Dr Moti Chandra, Kr. Sangram Singh and Ananda Coomaraswamy deserve special mention here.

Origin and Development

Details regarding the place of birth of Rajasthani painting, and the time and history of circumstances concerning its development, are not yet known. By having compiled books pertaining to many styles of Rajasthani painting different scholars have unfolded the history of the 17^th century and its aftermath, but their earlier history is riven with contradictions. Art expert Herman Goetz observes: "Hardly a year or half passes but new findings about Rajasthani painting thoroughly alter our old conceptions. Particularly, the latest knowledge about Mewar paintings has raised many question marks."

On the basis of earlier views Western scholars had recognised that the Rajasthani style flourished in various princely states after the downfall of the Mughal Empire. Some scholars however hold the view that it was merely an offshoot of Mughal painting, and prospered in the reign of Jehangir. On the strength of new researches undertaken and opinions formed years ago these views have been dismissed.

Hence these views, also expressed by Dr Coomaraswamy, do not appear appropriate even though historically they are highly significant!' With reference to the parameters regarding the antiquity of Rajasthani paintings, Dr Goetz presented his research papers, which throw light on its history.' Karl Khandalawala discussed in detail the origin and development of this painting.

Great scholars like Raikrishan Dass, Pramod Chandra, Sangram Singh, Satya Prakash, Anand Krishan, Hiren Mukherji and others also published scholarly articles from time to time which highlight details of the origin and growth of Rajasthani painting. On the basis of this research and many available ancient paintings it is now generally admitted that Rajasthani painting is a significant link with traditional Indian painting.

Tibetan historian Tara Nath (16^th century) refers to an artist named Shri Rangdhar who lived in Maru Pradesh (Marwar) in the 7^th century but paintings of this period are not available. The period from the 6^th century to the 12th century was a great landmark in the history of Rajasthan. From the 8^th to the 10th centuries this province was termed Gurjaratra, hence with the development of art and other vocations painting might have flourished here. Among available compilations, pictorial Kalpa-Sutra authored by Bhadrabhau Swami in V.S. 1216 is the oldest available artistic text of India."

In Rajasthan the first available pictorial text (on palm leaves) is Savag-Pailikahan Sutt Chuniii (Shravak Pratikraman Sutra Churni), compiled in the reign of Cubit Tej Singh at Ahar (Udaipur). Glimpses of his decorations are enshrined in intricate carvings in the temples of Nagda and Chittor." Another important text is Supasnah Chariyam (Suparshvanath Charitam) which was painted and compiled in the reign of Mokkhal at Devkulpatak (Dilwara) in V.S. 1480 (A.D. 1422-23).

In this text the influence of the Gujarat and Jain styles on Rajasthani paintings is discernible. In the continuity of this style KaIpa-Sutrii of 1426 deserves special mention. Its style of draping costumes is similar to that of the images of Vijaya Stambha of Maharana Kumbha. Around A.D. 1450 one copy of Geet-Gvvind and two of Bal-Gvpal-Stuti had been painted in Western India. This is the first pictorial text of Lord Krishna which comprises the first seeds of preliminary Rajasthani painting.

In 1451 Basant-Vilas painted in the Apbhransh style, whose famous background script was compiled by Acharya Ratnagiri in Ahmedabad, makes special mention of the origin of Rajasthani painting. In the history of Mewar, Maharana Kumbha (1433-1468) had been highly acclaimed for having patronised poetry, music and architecture. That such a great lover of the arts remained indifferent to painting is not plausible. But in the absence of proof no concrete conclusion could be inferred. Only a glimpse of frescoes could be visualised in the ruins of the fort of Kumbhalgarh and the palace of Chittorgarh of that period.

Up to the 15^th century this style of painting flourished in Rajasthan. Using Jain and later Jain texts as the basis on which the painting was done, this may be termed the Jain style, Gujarat style, Western India style or Apbhransh style. Undoubtedly, the period from the 7^th century to the 15th century saw an era of impressive growth of painting, iconography and architecture in Rajasthan developed from the synthesis of original art and the traditions of Ajanta-Ellora. From this point no distinction had ever been made between the Rajasthan and Gujarat styles. In the regions of Bangur and Chhappan, many artists from Gujarat had settled and were known as Sompuras. During the reign of Maharana Kumbha, the legendary artist Shilpi Mandan migrated here from Gujarat."

After analysing the abovementioned pictorial texts from the 12^th century to the 15^th century, it could be established that such paintings contained the seeds of the Rajasthani styles of painting. The basis of most of these paintings is Jain texts. In these paintings faces are savachashma, noses resembling that of Garuda, tall but stiff figures, highly embossed breasts, mechanical movements and poses, clouds, trees, mountains and rivers are depicted. Red and yellow colours have been used frequently.

It is difficult to tell where preliminary Rajasthani painting flourished in the 15^thcentury, but on the basis of other pictorial texts it may be stated that the amended form of Rajasthani painting of that age had developed with some distinct features. Adi Puran, decorated with 417 paintings, was a text in the Gujarati style compiled in 1540. It was a beacon in the annals of Indian painting.

Although influenced by Apbhransh style, this text, symbolic of Rajasthani painting in respect of colour drawing, physical structure, depiction of nature, dress, expression of sentiment, enjoys a prestigious position. Avadhi poetry Mrigvati (decorated with 250 paintings) and pictorial lorchande belong to this category of text. In the pictorial texts of Sanghrani-Sutra (1583) and Uttaradliyan Sutra (1591), mention was made that a revised form of Rajasthani painting had been created.

In pictorial Chorpancha-Sika and Geet-Govind texts of that age, this school of painting was appreciably represented. Regarding Rajasthani paintings, two very significant texts are available. They are based on the Bhagwad.

The first in 1598 and the other" in 1610 had probably been painted somewhere in Rajasthan. In them developed the shape of Rajasthani painting with its special characteristics that had emerged. Rag-Ma1a24 pictures painted by Nasiruddin at Chavand, capital of Maharana Pratap, are the first available specimens of paintings solely created on the soil of Rajasthan. Traditions of the later period are noticed in the Mewar school.

On the basis of these facts I submit that the birthplace of Rajasthani painting was only Rajasthan, and Medapat (Mewar) was its centre of growth. In reality the Rajasthani style was a new development of the Apbhransh style. In other words, in place of the process of decline taking place in the 9^th-10^thcenturies, a phase of development had begun in the 15^th century. This revival might have taken place in Gujarat and southern Rajasthan (Mewar). Other leading scholars identify Mewar with the origin and growth of Rajasthani painting. Dr Goetz also firmly holds this opinion.

Those tracts come under the hill states of Mewar, Banswara and Eder in southern Rajasthan which were ruled by the Suryavanshi dynasty from ancient times. These rulers continued to carry the torch of Indian culture even after the disintegration of the 'Gupta Empire. Hence these rulers had absorbed the high traditions of Ajanta and Ellora up to the medieval age.

The beginning of the pure Rajasthani style has been fixed between the latter half of the 15th century and the early part of the 16^th century, probably around 1500. The Rajasthani style emerged from the Apbliransh style in Gujarat and was influenced by the Kashmir style in the 15^th century. Some such paintings have been found in which the impact of the Mughal style is nowhere discernible. The Bengali Ragini paintings of Bharat Kala Bha wan is one of them. The above view of Raikrishan Dass seems authentic today as at the time Rajasthani painting was taking shape Babar, grandfather of Akbar and founder of the Mughal Empire in India, was born in 1463. Mehmood Begra, Sultan of Gujarat, and Maharana Kumbha both earned great reputation as keen lovers of art. In the same period painting had attained its zenith in Kashmir in the reign of Jainul Abdin, when probably a cultural exchange between friendly states might have taken place.

Because of the emergence of the Rajasthani style in Gujarat and Mewar the dormant consciousness of Indian painting awakened. It was a new version of the Apbhransh style. From the point of expression of sentiments and depiction of drawings, even though the Rajput style had emerged in its unique perspective, in selection of theme it had faithfully followed the Apbhransh style. Very artistic paintings depicting Rag-Mala, Shringar, descriptions of Barah-Masa and Krishna-Lila were the contribution of the Rajput style, which had its origin in the Apbhransh style."

Some scholars recognise the Gujarati style as the mother of Rajasthani painting and its guiding spirit. Pramod Chandra says: "Gujarat was a principal centre where Rajasthani painting acquired its prominent status . . ." Shri Manju La! Ranchhor Dass Majumdar observes: "The Gujarat style gave birth to the Rajput style, that rare beauty visible in drawings of mountain, river, sea, fire, cloud, tree in the Rajput style originated from the Gujarat style."

In regard to the impact of Jam art, many scholars stress the view that it made a significant contribution to the growth of Hindu-Rajput art. Jain art was responsible for incorporating creeper foliage in Indian painting. Later, having surrendered the traditional heritance to the Rajput style, Jain art was lost in oblivion. Dr Yajdani comments: "Jain art does not represent the best art of its period." Hence it is argued that it might have surrendered its traditions to the Rajput style, but it would be a great blunder on our part to admit this view.

Rajasthani painting originated in the state of Rajasthan alone. Having been greatly influenced by other styles of painting, it flourished greatly in this state. In its growth the ancient history of the state and its geography played a major role. On the heroic soil of the Rajputs, evidence of their chivalrous deeds and the imprint of their civilization and culture in the shape of poetry, painting, and architecture are scattered here and there.

Classification

The origin and development of Rajasthani painting, like many other schools, did not take place in one area, nor was it cultivated by only a few artists. In all ancient towns and religious and cultural centres of Rajasthan painting blossomed and flourished. Royal courts, religious centres, rulers, feudal lords made a valuable contribution to the growth of Rajasthani painting, which reached its pinnacle of glory in the 17^th-18^th centuries after having enriched the styles and substyles of other erstwhile states, as a result of which its coordinated shape came into existence.

In regard to the classification of Rajasthani styles, scholars hold divergent views. Artists of different states who painted in their own styles conform to local condi-tions. The distinct characteristic of painting thus produced has been termed the style of that particular region. In this way, several styles came into prominence in Rajasthan, notably the Mewar, Marwar, Kishangarh, Bundi, Kota, Jaipur, and Alwar schools had achieved great ascendancy.

Dr Moti Chandra mainly recognises the Mewar, Bundi and Kishangarh schools. Scholars like Dr Goetz, Karl Khandalawala, Ram Gopal Vijayavargia, Kumar Sangram Singh added more styles and substyles pertaining to Marwar, Bikaner, Kota, Jaipur, Uniara and Devgarh etc. In 1969 I worked on the authenticity of Alwar style.

From the point of geographical and administrative conditions, Rajasthani painting may be studied after classifying it in four parts. In actual practice it has four principal schools in which many styles and substyles flourished and influenced each other:

(1) The Mewar school comprising Chavand, Udaipur, Devgarh, Nathdwara, Sawar styles and substvles.

(2) The Marwar school comprising Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jaisalmer, Pali, Naugore, Ghanerao styles and substyles.

(3) The Hadoti school comprising Bundi, Kota, Jhalawar styles and substyles.

4) The Dhundar school comprising Amber, Jaipur, Shekhawati, Uniara, Alwar styles and substyles.

Having placed the styles and substyles of the whole of Rajasthan within the purview of the above schools, a detailed study of them could be undertaken. In the medieval age it was quite natural for the small and big states of Rajasthan and the neighbouring states to influence each other in the domain of culture.

Writer – Jay Singh Neeraj

Religious Songs of Mirabai

May 30, 2013, 2:47 am

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Pray, some one, convey to Him, my......

Pray, some one, convey to Him, my

message to come.

The glad tidings to come, the happy news

to come.

Neither comes He nor sendeth any news.

He hath acquired the habit to torment me.

Alack, howsoever I plead, these eyes came

not for my reproach.

Flow they as the streams in the rains.

What can I do, it is beyond me.

The wings I do not possess, wherewith to

fly o'er to Him.

Prays Mira, when will you meet her?

Fallen a victim is she to Thy snares.

I know not, the manner in which the.....

I know not, the manner in which the

Beloved to meet.

My Beloved came and from the

courtyard returned.

As I, the unlucky one, lay asleep.

Accursed I, my garments I shall tear, and

the msset don,

A mendicant shall I turn, seeking Him.

I shall the sign of my consorthood, my

bangles, break, and the partings of my

hair disturb.

And the collyrium of my eyes, I shall

wash away.

For every moment the agony of separation

troubles me,

Not for a second can I secure peace.

Of Mira, the Lord is the Protector,

Mind, once you meet Him, take care,

You do not leave Him.

Writer – Bankey Behari

---

Introduction on Rashtrakuta

May 31, 2013, 2:25 am

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In the eighth century, the Early Western Chalukya power came to an end and the Rashtrakutas under Dantidurga asserted themselves. Dantidurga was followed by his uncle Krishna I who was not only a great ruler but was the creator of an undoubtedly unique monument in the Deccan, the Kailasanatha temple at Ellora, carved out of living rock. The glory of this monument has an effective description in the Baroda grant of Karka Suvarnavarsha. It is here given that 'a gaze at this wonderful temple on the mountain of Elapura makes the astonished immortals, coursing the sky in celestial cars, always wonder whether "this is surely the abode of Svayambhu Siva and not an artificially made (building). Has ever greater beauty been seen?" Verily even the architect who built it felt astonished, saying, "The utmost perseverance would fail to accomplish such a work again. Ah! how has it been achieved by me?" and by reason of it, the king was caused to praise his name.

Krishna had thus paid a tribute to the aesthetic taste of Vikramaditya, a scion of the vanquished dynasty, as also an appreciation of the earlier defeated southern power at Kanchi, which was the source of this artistic appeal. The Kailasa temple was fashioned after the Pattadakal temples which in turn were executed by a great sutradhari named Sarvasiddhiacharya of the southern country, the subjugated area from Kanchi.

The remarkable similarity in details noticed in the Kailasa temples at Ellora and Kanchi made Professor Jouveau Dubreuil look for and discover paintings in the latter; how he found the clue to these in the former and how amply his search bore fruit is only too well known, though the paintings may be fragmentary.

The paintings at Ellora cover the ceilings and walls of the mandapas and represent not only the iconographic forms but also the lovely floral designs and animals and birds entwining in the patterns. The beautiful elephant amidst a lotus pattern in gorgeous colour now partially faded is as lively as probably some of the other figure drawings. The Nataraja here is a splendid example of the Chalukya type and has to be compared with the earlier one at Badami. The figure is multiarmed and the dance is in the chatura pose. The anatomy of figure, the details and the ornamentation closely follow that of sculpture, including such minute details as the pattern of the jatamakuta, the elaboration of decoration and so forth. It is one of the most beautifully preserved panels at Ellora. The figure of Lakshminarayana on Garuda is also interesting. In this can be noticed the peculiar eyes and the pointed nose in the three-quarter view which later became a distinguishing feature of the western Indian paintings from Gujarat of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries A.D.

Flying Vidyadharas with their consorts, against a back-ground of trailing clouds, musical figures and other themes closely follow the earlier Chalukya tradition. A comparison of these Vidyadhara figures with similar ones from the Badami caves of an earlier date would clearly reveal this. The colour patterns, the composing of one dark against another fair, the muktayajnopavita of the male and the elaborate dhammilla of the female figure, the flying attitude, etc., are all incomparable. The Jain cave towards the end of the group of caves at Ellora has its entire surface of ceiling and wall covered with paintings with a wealth of detail. There are scenes illustrating Jain texts and decorative patterns with exuberant floral, animal and bird designs. These, along with the cave, are to be dated a century after the Kailasa temple, the great monument of the Rashtrakuta, Krishna.

Writer – C.Sivaramamurti

Introduction to Mewar School

June 1, 2013, 12:50 am

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From the point of view of historical traditions in Rajasthani painting the Mewar school occupies first place. The artistic heritage of Medpat, the land of Guhil rulers, was a perennial source of inspiration for ancient and other schools of art. Paintings of Mewar earned wide publicity among other styles and substyles, and paintings of the Udaipur, Nathdwara and Devgarh styles are immortal legacies of this school.

The preliminary and original form of Rajasthani painting, which had emerged from a synthesis, is visible in the Mewar school. Some artists and Guild rulers of Vallabhipur came to Mewar and applied the Ajanta traditions with tremendous success. This tradition, after having assimilated local features, maintained its original identity and was known as the Mewar school of painting.

Historical Background

When did the Mewar school of Indian painting come into existence? Connoisseurs of art have speculated on this point as great centres of art like Chavand and Chittor had time and again been devastated in numerous onslaughts by enemies. Hence even today the history of Mewar is shrouded in ignorance.

King Rana Kumbha (1443-1468) was a keen student of architecture, literature, music and the other arts. That this ruler was indifferent to painting is a view that does not seem acceptable, but the history of painting in the 15^th century remains in oblivion. Rana Sanga (1509-1520) spent his life waging wars against the Mughal ruler Babar.

A great centre of the arts, Chittor had been devastated in constant wars, and Udai Singh (1537-1572) made Udaipur his capital because of its strategic location. Maharana Pratap (1572-1597) never accepted the suzerainty of the Mughals and established Chavand, situated in a mountainous region, as his capital. Chittor, Chavand and Udaipur earned a great reputation as centres of early Mewari painting.

Amar Singh (1597-1620) partially accepted the suzerainty of the Mughals, and for this reason the impact of Mughal art on Mewar painting was significant, particularly in the reigns of Karan Singh and Jagat Singh (1628-1652). Raj Singh (1652-1680), having rejected the suzerainty of Aurangzeb, installed a statue of Shri Nathji in Nathdwara and thus exhibited his deep devotion to the Vaishnav sect. The Pushti sect began to influence Mewari art. Raj Singh, a keen lover of art, was a Pushti margi, hence in his reign the arts flourished. Jai Singh (1680-1696) and Amar Singh (1698-1710) provided a further impetus to Mewar art.

From these facts, the role of Mewar in developing Rajasthani art from its very beginning is abundantly clear. On the basis of researches, the first example of the Mewar style is the pictorial text titled Shravak Pratikraman Churni, which was painted in Adhar (Ahar-Udaipur) in 1260 in the reign of Guhil Tej Singh.2 Its decoration resembles the intricate artistic workmanship of temples dedicated to Mokul in Nagda, Udaipur and Chittor.

The distinct features of this style include savachashma, a nose resembling an eagle's, eyes similar to parvalli-fank, long figures and plentiful use of red-yellow colours. Examples of it are referred to in Supasnah Chariyam, a pictorial text compiled and painted at Devkulapatak (Dilwara) in the reign of Mokul around 1422-23 In that text, the imprint of the Jain and Gujarati schools, along with the above-named features of Rajashani painting, is clearly visible. In this style Kalpa-Sutra (1426) deserves special mention. The style of its drapery resembles that of the images of Vijay-Stambh of Kumbha.

For many centuries this pervaded most of the painting in Western India in general and Mewar in particular. The forts of Maharana Kumbha (Kumbhalgarh) and Kumbha Palace (Chittorgarh) possess frescoes which depict the salient features of paintings of that age. Only faint glimpses of these frescoes are now visible. In the 16^th century, Chavand, the capital of Maharana Pratap, earned the reputation of being a great centre of art. In 1605, Rag-Mala was painted at Chavand with the impact of folk art and the imprint of the Mewar style.' Nayak-nayika had a series painted in 1640 definitely in the Mewar style, and it also should the partial influence of the Mughal style of the Jehangir period.

Painting Many pictorial texts painted in the Mewar style in the middle of the 17th century and in the reign of Maharana Jagat Singh (1628-52) are available. Because of the growth of the Vallabha sect in Rajasthan, the Radha-Krishna Lila was the main contribution of the Mewar style. Hence Bhagwad-Puran was the main subject of painting. In the text of Bhagwad-Puran painted by Sahabadi (1648) and preserved in the Bhandarkar Institute, Pune, the Maharaja of Jodhpur Museum and the National Museum, fine examples of the Mewar style are available.

In this period of composing poems with the Krishna-Lila legend as basis, paintings were created on a large scale symbolic of the cult of Krishna-Bhakti in Mewar. Pictorial texts concerning Sursagar, Rasikpriya, Rag-Mala, Ramayan are available in the Mewar style. Scenes of the Ramayan painted in 1651 and preserved in the State Museum, Udaipur, and paintings created by the artist Hon bar in 1649 and preserved in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, are also available. Many pictures painted on the basis of stanzas of Sursagar are still available in the custody of Gopi Krishna Kanodia, Calcutta, and in the private collections of Sangram Singh, Ram Gopal Vijayavargia, Jaipur and National Museum, New Delhi.

The period of Maharana Jagat Singh (1628-52) was the Golden Age of the development of Mss painting and other arts. The paintings based on the Rain Charit and Krishna Chant are a valuable art-heritage even now. Sahi Badeen and other talented painters gave a new life to Mewari art.

Maharana Raj Singh (1652-1681) also maintained the tradition of his father. During his period, paintings based on a number of Sanskrit-writings, books of Bliakti and Ritikaleen periods were made in abundance. The paintings of Shukar Kshatra Mahatinnya made by the famous painter Sahi Badeen in 1655 and Bhramar Geet Stir in 1659, a few leaves of which are preserved in the National Museum, New Delhi, hint at the evolution of Mewar style. A few pages of Geet Govind set painted during this period, preserved in Govt. Museum, Udaipur, are exceedingly artistic.

During the reign of Maharana Jai Singh (1680-1698) the Mewar painting-tradi-tion developed with a new vigour. One hundred twenty-two miniature paintings of Sursagar preserved in the Govt. Museum, Udaipur, are the achievements of this period. In these, Surdas has been painted in various gestures such as holding cymbals (Majira) in his hands, engaged in Kirtan, or posed with folded hands. The Ultarkand of the Ramayan and hundreds of Mahabharat pictures were painted during this period. Maharana Amar Singh II (1698-1710) also gave a fillip to Mewar painting tradition in which the drawing of a number of sketches occupies an important place.

In the reign of Maharana Sangram Singh (1710-1734) also this tradition went on quite ceaselessly. The continuing tradition of Geet-Govind painting is linked with the 'Set' (bearing the name of Roop Ji Bhatt Samvat 1771 A.D. 1714) available at Govt. Museum, Udaipur. The important set of Bihari Sat Sai with Jagannath Kavi Raj's Colophon (1719) is preserved at Saraswati Bhandar, Udaipur: In addition to these, a number of group-paintings were also made. These paintings present life-like depiction of feudal life.

Even in the last phase of the eighteenth century, the Mewari painting kept on displaying feudal grandeur exemplified in the paintings of Jiwa, Nanga, Shahji, Miya, Shiva etc. preserved in Palace Museum, Udaipur and the private museum of Kumar Sangram Singh.

At Nathdwara, the installation of Shri Nathji gave rise to fresh dimensions in art. During the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the Mewar painting, imbibing the Brij and Mughal influences, continued to manifest its rise and fall through epic-painting, wall-painting and miniature painting.

Nathdwara Substyle

A distinct Mewar style of painting is termed Nathdwara substyle. To avoid the oppression of Aurangzeb, the image of Shri Nathji installed at Govardhan was brought to Rajasthan and installed at Nathdwara in 1670. Along with Acharya Gopi Nathji, many artists endowed with great religious fervour came here and created many beautiful paintings of Shri Nathji.8 With the combination of the already established art of Mewar and artists of Nathdwara, the Nathdwara style of painting emerged. Many paintings concerning various lilas of Shri Nathji were created on paper or cloth, and they are still available in various national and international museums as well as many private collections.

Behind the figures of Shri Nathji, large screens of cloth are affixed to enhance their decorative aspect. These are known as picchavais, and they are the original contribution of the Nathdwara style. Picchapais are often created to symbolise any of these concerning festivals and lilas of Shri Nathji. Even today, the tradition of Nathdwara continues. Depiction of natural scenery from the 18th century to this date is a distinct feature of the Nathdwara style.

The Nathdwara style continued to achieve artistic beauty. In the period of Tilkya t Goverdhan Lallji, painting of this style attained a pinnacle of glory. The main patrons of it were those thousands of pilgrims and devotees of Shri Na thji who continued to purchase paintings for the purpose of decoration.

In the 18th century, owing to the abundance of themes relating to the Was of Krishna in painting, subjects like Mata Yasoda, Nandlal, cowherds were particularly painted. Because of the impact of Balkrishna a sense of maturity appeared in the figures of females, the physical profile and glimpses of sentiments of affection are particularly noticeable. Among male subjects physically stout Nandlal and other Balgopal figures call for special mention.

Cows, colts, boys, forest creepers are special components painted in the Na th-dwara style. Because of the overall impact of folk art, simplicity of subjects, rhythm and combination of colours with distinct features had emerged in earlier paintings. About 200 years ago Shri Ram Chandra Baba, who came to Nathdwara from Jaipur, introduced new elements in sketching trees in paintings of that style. The artist Bhagwa ti had exhibited his skill in drawing minute details. The work of leading artists like Narayan, Cha tu rbhuj, Ramlinga, Udai Ram also deserves special reference.

In the 19^th and 20^thcenturies, with the development of commercial art in the Nathdwara style, irregular colours and the growing impact of photography resulted in the systematic downgrading of the art of this region. But the tradition of painting in this style is still alive.

Devgarh Substyle

The Mewar School has been the chief and basic school of Rajasthani painting, and as such it has also influenced its nearby Thikanas in terms of drawing. The style of painting that developed there has imbibed not only its original culture, but it also remarkably manifests the stamp of natural environment, and the styles in vogue around. From this viewpoint the paintings of Devgarh, Sawar, and Shahpura Thikanas deserve a special note. These can be grouped under Mewar substyle.

Located near the Marwar border, Devgarh Thikana was established by Rawat Dwarkadas Chudawat in 1680 during the reign of Maharana Jaisingh (1680-1698). Despite its adherence to the Mewar painting tradition, the Devgarh painting-style displays naturally the impact of Marwar. In 1728, the princess of Devgarh was married to Maharana Madho Singh of Jaipur, and as such due to matrimonial, blood and cultural relations; and also owing to the assimilation of the traits of Mewar, Marwar and Jaipur art, the paintings prepared by the painters of this region have their own individual identity. This style has acquired distinctiveness on account of the use of thick and well-balanced lines, abundance of green and yellow colours unlike Mewar, the folk painting of Marwar-like figures of men and women, natural desert landscape, hunting, community feast (goth), harems, royal grandeur, adornment, and carriages etc. On this basis it can be placed under Mewar substyle.

Devgarh paintings are preserved in various museums and private collections, chief among which are National Museum, New Delhi, Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, Kumar Sangram Singh Museum, Jaipur, Kawasji, Shri Suhali, Boman Behran, Bombay etc. Besides, important Devgarh material is available at the per-sonal collection of Rawal Nahar Singh of Devgarh. The wall-paintings at Kapardwar of Devgarh, Ajara Ki Ovari, Moti Mahal, give us an idea of the tradition of painting here.

Among the Devgarh painters, Bagata (1769-1820) and Kanwala I (1775-1810) were two distinguished artists. Kanwala II (1800-1850), Chaukha and Baij Nath (1770-1830) following in the footsteps of their above illustrious predecessors, en-riched the Devgarh substyle by their valuable contribution. Dr Shridhar Andhare highlighted this style for the first time.

Salient Features

Mewar painting possesses unique features which greatly influenced the different styles of Rajasthani painting." A synthesis of Jain and Gujarati styles is evident in the earliest Mewar painting. Besides the simplicity of folk art, the irregularity of line was a unique characteristic. But from the middle of the 17^thcentury the independent growth of this style became famous for its own inherent qualities.

Stout masculine figures, faces covered with mustaches, wide eyes, open lips, small neck, long turban, waist tied with dupatta and body decorated with general ornaments are some distinctive features of the Mewar style. Paintings of females depict eyes resembling those of a fish, a straight long nose, double chins, short stature, body covered with ghagara-luggri and kartchuki and Rajasthani ornaments.

Careful drawing of nature is visible in the Mewar School. Among birds, chakor, hails, peacock, and among animals horse, elephant, deer, lion were frequently painted. The impact of the Malwa school is visible in the paintings of nature. In Mewar paintings, where colours maintain their own simplicity, most paintings have been drawn upon red, yellow and green surfaces. An artistic display of folk colours is a unique tradition of Mewar paintings.

Writer – Jay Singh Neeraj  

Painting of the Deccan in Indian Court Painting

June 4, 2013, 1:30 am

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Paintingat the Deccani courts grew from a hybrid cultural back-ground comparable to that of the Mughal school, but with quite different and regrettably short-lived results. By the 16th century five Muslim sultanates had emerged in the Deccan, which, acting together for the only time in their history, disposed of the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar in 1565. Afterwards they constantly formed factions and went to war in an almost frivolous manner. Unlike the Mughals, the Sultans failed to take the business of state-craft and territorial domination seriously. They put more passion into the pursuit of courtly pleasures and the patronage of music, literature and the arts. These projects benefited from a rich cultural mixture of Hindu court traditions inherited from the Vijayanagar Empire with those introduced by the many Middle Eastern immigrants Persians, Arabs, Turks and Africans who had been attracted by the wealth of the Deccani kingdoms. Some European influence was also present, but it was less conspicuous than in Mughal art The period of greatest achievement lasted only a few decades, for the empire-building Mughals found little difficulty in subjugating the Deccani rulers. Of the three courts known to have patronised painting, Ahmadnagar fell in 1600, while Bijapur and Golconda were finally taken by Aurangzeb in 1686-7.

Those early Deccani paintings which survive are now scattered in many collections. Though few in numbers, they are remarkably consistent in quality, combining a high degree of finish with a playful refinement of line and subtle richness of palette. Portraits of rulers lack the sober, documentary realism or portentous imperial symbolism of their Mughal counterparts. They are imbued instead with a mood of indolent enjoyment, a conscious and self-absorbed appreciation of the passing moment. The most outstanding single patron was Ibrahim Adil Shah of Bijapur (1579-1627), who is seen in plate 14 seated with a lady in a palace chaniber in a delicate (though somewhat later) grisaille study embellished with gold and colouring. Ibrahim was above all things a rasika, a Sanskrit term for the man of highly developed sensibility, one who is cognisant of the rasas(literally, 'juice' or 'essence'), the sublimated emotional states on which Indian aesthetics are based: they can be approxi-matcly translated as love, heroism, disgust, rage, terror, joy, com-passion, wonder and peace. He composed a book of lyrics, the Kitab-i Nauras (Book of the Nine Rasas), which contains invocations both to the Hindu deities Sarasvati and Ganesha and a Muslim saint, as well as to his favourite elephant and the beloved lute, named Moti Khan, with which he would accompany his singing. He was a master of the slow and dignified dhrupad vocal style, and generous provision was made for the thousands of court musicians in his new city of Nauraspur (City of the Nine Rasas). Besides fine elephants, he had a weakness for jewels and mangoes (a plate of them appears beside him here) and he enjoyed taming falcons and parrots. He is said to have written a treatise on chess describing various new and baffling moves, but he did not excel as a statesman or general.

A study of a richly caparisoned horse held by a groom, whose costume shows some European influence is the work of one of lbrahim's leading painters. Its freshness of colouring is set off by the use of gold, and the trees and plants arc suggested by a deftly attenuated line and delicate stippling. A painting of a female ascetic seated by a stream [plate x6], although it is another later and less fine version of an original work of lbrahim's period, displays the lush landscape conventions and compact density of composition of Bijapur painting.

In 1636 Bijapur was compelled to accept Mughal suzerainty. Lavish exchanges of presents always accompanied political relations between states, and paintings as well as elephants, jewels and money travelled in both directions. The fully developed Mughal style of portraiture inevitably began to influence contemporary work at Bijapur and Golconda. Even so, its naturalistic conventions were often interpreted with subtlety and splendour by the southern artists. A portrait of Muhammad Adil Shah (1627-56) riding an elephant, accompanied by his minister who fans him, is derived from a Mughal model, as seen for example in a brush-drawing of a Mughal prince riding the elephant Mahabir Deb; as if happens, the inscription in Shah Jahan's hand records that this elephant was presented to him as tribute by Muhammad Adil Shah. While the Mughal artist has meticulously emphasized the finely textured wrinkles and mottling of the elephant's skin, the two Deccani painters have set its smoky dark mass against a vivid blue ground, throwing into relief the sumptuous textile patterns and the Sultan's gold coat, which has been minutely pricked to catch the light.

From the 165os the Bijapur and Golconda artists lost their earlier inspiration, and their work declined into more insipid versions of Mughal themes. Aurangzcb's conquest finally disrupted their traditions. In the 18th century, however, as Mughal control of the provinces weakened, the viceroy Asaf Jah was able to establish an independent dynasty based at Hyderabad, near Golconda. Tainting began to flourish there in a style which mixed the romantic flavor of the former Golconda school with an increasing Mughal pallor and rigidity. Nevertheless, a portrait of a Hyderabad minister retains considerable delicacy of composition and detail. Versions of the Hyderabad style were widely patronised. A painting from the Maratha court at Tanjore in the far south is one of the last in a long line of Deccani procession scenes. Raja Tuljaji (1765-87) appears as always in profile, wearing a flowered gold coat and riding a frisky horse; but his retainers already show the influence of the Company style. Within a few years his adopted son Sarabhoji, who had been tutored by the Danish missionary Swartz, would be patronising natural history painting of the European type.

Writer-Andrew Topsfield 

Introduction to Early Chera

June 5, 2013, 2:04 am

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The Chera country and the Kongu area which was included in the kingdom of the Cheras reveal the influence of Pallava and Pandyan art. Chera rock-cut cave temples, like those at Kaviyur and Tiruvallara, recall the early Pallava temples at Mamandur, Pallavaram, Siyamangalam, Tiruchirapalli, Mahendravadi, etc. The beautiful face in classical style, which is nearly all that, is left of the painting which once adorned the cave temple at Tirunandikkarai of about the eighth-ninth centuries A.D, represents the early phase of Chera art. It is interesting to compare this with a fragment of paintingrepresenting a princely figure from one of the cells of the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchi to which it bears a striking resemblance.

Writer – C. Sivaramamurti

The Babur Nama

June 6, 2013, 1:11 am

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The Babur Nama reflects the character and interests of the author, Zehir-ed-Din Muhammad Babur. Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, is regarded as one of the most romantic and interesting personalities of Asian history. He was a man of indomitable will, a great soldier, and an inspiring leader. But unlike most men of action he was also a man of letters with fine literary taste and fastidious critical perception. In Persian, he was an accomplished poet, and in his mother-tongue, the Turki, he was master of a simple forceful style.

He was conscious of his own importance and kept a record of his daily activities in the form of brief notes. He made use of these notes when soon after the capture of Chanderi on 29 January, 1528; he decided to write his Memoirs. He chose one of the many gardens around Agra that he had been creating ever since he had proclaimed himself the padshah of Hindustan and dictated his memoirs, almost continuously till his death on 26 December, 1530. A painting shows him dictating his memoirs to a scribe. In less than three years, he succeeded in giving final form to his autobiography.

At times Babur was so engrossed in this work that he forgot his surroundings completely. According to his daughter, Gulbadan, once when he was busy on his autobiography a storm blew up and the tent in which he was dictating came down on his head with the result that "sections and book were drenched under water and gathered together with much difficulty." But he attached such a great importance to rescuing the papers that he with the help of his daughter "laid them in the folds of a woolen throne carpet, put this on the throne, and on it piled blankets and then kindled a fire inspite of the wet" and occupied himself "till shot of day drying folios and sections."

Babur's autobiography to which he had perhaps himself given the title of Babur Wind was written "in the purest dialect of the Turki language. It is reckoned among the most enthralling and romantic works in the literature of all times. It makes a delightful reading and "deservedly holds a high place in the history of human literature."

Babur Nama was preserved as a valuable treasure in the Royal Library by all the five successors of Babur, who, together with him, are known as the Great Mughals of Indian history. In fact each one of them showed his adoration for the Nama in one form or the other. Humayun on ascending the throne ordered All'u-l-Katib to copy his father's Turki book and see to it that the work was finished in less than a month and a half. Perhaps not fully satisfied with this hurriedly done copy, during the next ten years that he held the reins of the Empire, he had another copy of the Babur Nama prepared. 

Humayun carried Babur's original manuscript with him to exile from 1551 to 1555 and used his leisure moments to annotate it. Akbar showed his veneration for the book by ordering, Khan-i-Khana Abdur Rahim to translate it into Persian. Abdur Rahim is recorded to have finished the assignment in 1589 when he presented to Akbar, its Persian version under the title Waquit-i-Baburi. Jahangir retouched a copy of the Babur Nama which he tried to annotate and complete by supplying the missing links. ShahJahan adored the book. Among the select books that he would daily hear being recited to him before going to sleep was the Babur Nama. Aurangzeb got inscribed a number of Babur Nam& from the original preserved in the Royal Library and sent them to many places of importance in his rapidly expanding empire.

It appears that inspite of a brilliant translation in Persian available since 1589 it was the Turki Babur Nama that held the place of honour in the Royal Library of the Mughal Emperors. It seems something of an irony, therefore, that its original should have been lost and unlike the Persian Waquit-i-Baburi should have been unavailable even in copy to the European scholars when they started taking interest in Babur's autobiography. It is surmised that the original of the Babur Nãmä was either destroyed in the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739 or burnt during the Mutiny in that city in 1857. The Persian Waquit-i-Baburi, however, escaped either of those two fates and attracted the attention of the European indologists. The first European Indologists to be interested in Babur, as in other personalities of Mughal period of Indian history, were almost all Scots, e.g. Dr Leyden, William Erskine, John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone.

In the early years of the nineteenth century when the British interest in the Mughals and their history was acquiring depth, a translation of the Waquit-i-Baburi, was started by Dr Leyden. He seems to have liked the work and did lot of jottings from Waquit-i-Baburi when Elphinstone arrived at Calcutta and sent him the Babur Nama which he had purchased at Peshawar in 1810. The Babur Nãmã in Turkish slackened Leyden's enthusiasm for the work that he had been doing and he left the translation of Waquit-i-Baburi only partially done before his death in 1811. What Leyden had left half done was completed by Erskine. Perhaps without knowing that Leyden was engaged in the translation of Waquit-i-Baburi, Erskine had also been busy translating it but just as he was thinking of giving final touches to his translation, he received all the jottings and papers of Leyden passed on to him after the latter's death in Java in 1811. The arrival of Leyden papers forced Erskine to revise the work that he had al-ready done and it kept him busy for another five years. It was only in 1816 now that he passed on the twice done translation to England to be published in the joint name of Leyden and him-self under the title Memoirs of Babur. A little time before he had done that like Leyden five years earlier, he too received the Babur Nama from Elphinstone but, possibly because he was not well-versed in Turki or felt too tired to begin the translation, already done twice by him, for the third time, made no use of the Turki manuscript. The Memoirs of Babur in Leyden and Erskine's name finally published in 1826 were consequently rightly looked upon by the indologists all over Europe as a translation of a translation of Babur's memoirs.

The Memoirs of Babur was looked upon as a valuable contribution to understanding Babur. Its extracts were translated and published in German by A. Kaiser in 1828 as Denkwurd-ingkeiton des Zahir-uddin Muhammad Babur. In 1844, R. M. Galdeff not only based his The Life of Babur on Leyden and Erskine's Memoirs of Babur but further showed the importance in which he held the latter work by publishing An Abridgement of the Memoirs, a work which was a summary of Leyden and Erskine's work published eighteen years earlier.

It was inevitable that the more the Leyden and Erskine's work was read, the greater should be the demand for the original Turki Babur Nama and some translation in a European language done directly from it. This demand was mistakenly believed to have been satisfied by De Courteille who published in 1871 Les Memoirs de Biz-bur in French. De Courteille had done his translation from Illminski's edited version of one Kehr's Turki transcript of the Babur Nama lying at Petersberg but without knowing that Kehr's copy was not made from any Babur Nama but an original work in Turki by one Timur-pulad, presented to one of the members of the Russian Government in pursuance of the policy of Peter the Great to improve Russian relations with the numerous Khanates in Central Asia. When the mission returned to Petersberg, the member of the mission who had received Timur-pulad's manuscript passed it on to Petersberg Library in the Foreign Office. There it was noticed by one Kehr, a teacher in the School of Oriental Studies at Petersberg. Kehr transcribed it as also translated it into Latin. Because he had put the two side by side, Kehr's transcript begun to attract more scholars than Timur-pulad's. In 1857 Illminski made Kehr's transcript as the basis for preparing an indexed volume of what he believed was the Turkish Babur Nama. What had been brought out by De Courteille was a French translation of Illminski work minus the latter's edited remarks. And, since, as subsequently discovered, Timur-pulad's work was not Babur Nama in Turki but at the best a retranslation in Turki of the Persian translation of that done by Erskine four decades earlier.

It was left to Mrs. A. S. Beveridge to do the translation into English from a genuine copy Turki Babur Nama. What made it possible for her to do that was firstly the discovery of a genuine Turki copy of the Babur Nama in Hyderabad and secondly her success in not only procuring it for herself for some time but also have a number of fascimiles made of it by the E. J. Wilkinson Gibb Trust. These fascimiles enabled Mrs. Beveridge to prove to scholars that the Hyderabad Babur Nama surpassed both in volume and quality, all other Babur Nama. She wrote a series of articles in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society between 1900 and 1908 and finally came out with its English translation in 1926. It is this translation which I have utilized in explaining the contents of paintings.

"Babur's Memoirs form one of the best and most faithful pieces of autobiography extant" wrote Dowson. "They are entirely superior to the hypocritical revelations of Timur, and the pompous declarations of Jahangir not inferior in any respect to the Expeditions of Xenophon, and rank but little below the commentaries of Caesar." He further wrote "These Memoirs are the best Memorial of the life and reign of the frank and jovial conqueror; they are ever fresh and will long continue to be read with interest and pleasure."

As a picture of the life of an Eastern sovereign in court and camp, the book stands unrivalled among Oriental autobiographies. "It is almost the only specimen of real history in Asia... In Babur Nama the figures, dresses, habits, and tastes, of each individual introduced are described with such minuteness and reality that we seem to live among them, and to know their persons as well as we do their characters. His descriptions of the countries visited, their scenery, climate, productions, and works of art are more full and accurate than will, perhaps, be found in equal space in any modern traveller."

"His Memoirs are no rough soldier's diary, full of marches and counter-marches;... they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer, quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons, and a devoted lover of nature.. .The utter frankness of self-revelation, the unconscious portraiture of all his virtues and follies; his obvious truthfulness and fine sense of humour give the Memoirs an authority which is equal to their charm."

It is in truthful narration of events of his personal life that the value of the Babur Nama lies. Like most adolescents Babur also passed through a homosexual phase. He thus describes his love for a boy. "At this time there happened to be a lad belonging to the camp-bazaar, named Baburi. There was an odd sort of coincidence in our names. Sometimes it happened that Baburi came to visit me; when, from shame and modesty, I found myself unable to look him direct in the face. How then is it to be supposed that I could amuse him with conversation or a disclosure of my passion? From intoxication and confusion of mind I was unable to thank him for his visit; it is not therefore to be imagined that I had power to reproach him with his departure. I had not even self-command enough to receive him with the common forms of politeness. One day while this affection and attachment lasted, I was by chance passing through a narrow lane with only a few attendants, when, of a sudden, I met Baburi face to face. Such was the impression produced on me by this encounter that I almost fell to pieces. I had not the power to meet his eyes, or to articulate a single word. With great confusion and shame I passed on and left him, remembering the verses of Muhammad Salih:

"I am abashed whenever T see my love;

My companions look to me, and I look another way."

"The verses were wonderfully suited to my situation. From the violence of my passion and the effervescence of youth and madness, I used to stroll bare-headed and barefoot through lane and street, garden and orchard, neglecting the attentions due to friend and stranger; and the respect due to myself and others."

"Babur's Memoirs reveal the founder of the Mughal rule in India as a constant and jovial toper who had many a drinking party which were as important to him as his bottles or negotiations. When we see him move with perfect ease and familiarity among his company in these drinking parties we forget the prince in the man; and start sharing the temptations that generally led Babur to those excesses a shady wood, a hill with a fine prospect, or of a boat floating down a river; and enjoy the amusements with which they are accompanied, extemporary verses, recitations in Turki and Persian, with sometimes a song, and often a contest of repartee.

"On closing the Memoirs, we have in our possession a Babur who is more real than political record would make him. We have a Babur who, after many many trials of a long life, retains the same kind and affectionate heart, and the same easy and sociable temper with which he had set out on his career and in whom the possession of power and grandeur had neither blunted the delicacy of his taste, nor diminished the sensibility to the enjoyment of nature and imagination."

To Lane-Poole "Babur's Memoirs are no rough soldier's chronicles of marches, 'Saps, wines, blinds, zabions, palisades, revelings, half-moons and such trumpery'; they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer, quick in preception, discerning judge of men who was well able to express his thoughts and observations in clear and vigorous language."

Apart from its value as a source book of history, the importance of the Babur Nama lies in the fact that it is the first book on Natural History of India. Babur had keen sense of observation and he describes the physical features of the country, its people, animals, birds, and vegetation with precision and brevity. The value of some of the illustrations of the Babur Nama lies in the fact that these are the first natural history paintings in India.

Writer – M.S. Randhawa

Tantric Terminology

June 8, 2013, 2:31 am

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I do not think that a whole chapter on terminology in the early portions of this book rather than as an appendix requires any justification; nor is it due to the author's linguistic-analytical slant in his philosophical interests. A book attempting to survey the tantric tradition in its essentials must give very special attention to terminology and definition. In a wider or more general sense, this has been done in the preceding chapter. However, reference to established Hindu and Buddhist philosophical terminology is neither sufficient nor warrantable, because a considerable portion of nontantric Hindu and Buddhist philosophical nomenclature was subjected to semantic change, sometimes subtle, sometimes very radical indeed. A term frequently and innocuously used, say, in the Madhyamika-karikas, and translated by one constant term into Tibetan, does not necessarily have the same meaning in Tibetan or Indian tantric texts. The fact that the student sees the terms consistently used in the Indian original and in the Tibetan translation might tempt him to assume that they mean the same when they appear in a Sanskrit tantric text and its Tibetan translation. This is dangerous even when the term occurs in Sanskrit Hindu and Buddhist texts alone, where no Tibetan translation is available hardly any Hindu Sakta text appears in the Tibetan tantras (rgyud). The best example is Sanskrit mundra, which means 'the female adept' in the Buddhist tantric lore, and 'parched kidney beans' and other spiced grains in the Hindu Sakta tradition; quite apart from the many tantric and non-tantric passages, Hindu and Buddhist, where mundra means a ritualistic or iconographic gesture.

The purpose of this chapter, then, is to analyse some crucial Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist tantric terms and to establish their exact connotation. This has so far not been done, largely due to a lack of communication between philosophers and cultural anthropologists on the one side, and philologically oriented Buddhologists on the other. The fault seems to be that of the Buddhologists, who did not care, up to this day, to brush up their occidental vocabulary and to provide precise renditions of Buddhist, and a fortiori, tantric philosophical terminology. The reason for this neglect seems to lie in the notion that occidental philosophy works on totally different lines and that it can there-fore not provide terminological equivalents. This was true with the traditional western philosophers who excluded Indian thought from their study as below philosophical dignity' and whose attitude was reciprocated by the orientalist brand of counter-arrogance: that western philosophy was lacking the spiritual in-sight which could help it tackle the esoteric problems of Asian thought. Traditional philosophy say, up to Russell and Ayer was really not interested in creating a precise vocabulary that could suggest operational equivalents for Indian and Tibetan scholastic terminology. The analytical schools of Britain and America, however, have worked out a vocabulary which could be highly useful in rendering the former intelligible. To my know-ledge, however, no indologist with the exception of H. V. Guenther in India and Europe and Karl H. Potter in North America have cared to avail themselves of the work that has been done by occidental philosophers who regard language analysis as the main function of philosophy.

I shall start with a simple example: Tibetan sems, Sanskrit citta, is translated by such vague terms as 'mind' or even 'sour the latter being a downright atrocious translation so far as Buddhism is concerned. At best, the inadequacy of such renditions is admitted with a shrug as a bequest of last-century indology. However, I feel convinced that modern philosophy does give us an instrument to work out these vexing problems. With the growth of Tibetan Buddhist studies arose the habit of giving the Sanskrit term for the Tibetan in lieu of a translation, thus shelving the real issue; for while it is true that, for example, `nirmanakaya' is the Sanskrit equivalent of 'sprul sku', it is not very helpful to just write ` nirmanakaya ' in Roman characters, although the realization of the inadequacy of a term like 'phantom-body' is laudable. For what, then, is the 'nirmanakaya'?

It goes without saying that we cannot impugn the Tibetan translations of the original Sanskrit terms, and that for logical reasons: the Tibetans had no concepts matching the learned terminology of their Indian preceptors. We must assume that Buddhism was planted on a conceptual vacuum in Tibet. Any term chosen once, and used without modification, had come to stay. It is quite unlike trying to find an occidental term for a Sanskrit or Tibetan scholastic idiom, because occidental languages have a backlog of viable, even though risky, Graeco-Roman-Judaeo-Christian concepts. This shows itself in the translation of such innocuous words as (deva) as `god' or dnos pa (vastu) as 'substance' or 'nature'. 'Substance' cannot get rid of its Thomistic or Aristotelian flavour, and there is nothing of the kind in the Buddhist `vastu'. We shall see, however, that contemporary, non-Aristotelian philosophy might provide a useful term for the Buddhist concept. H. V. Guenther suggests 'reality', which would be acceptable if, as he does, the word is used as shorthand for 'all objects'; in other words if the Aristotelian flavour hovering around nouns suffixed by -ty can be kept out. I would recommend 'totality of sense-data' or even just 'all objects'; and never omitting the article for deva 'a god'.

To say that Tibetan renditions of Sanskrit terminology are 'more exact' than any western rendition is a sort of wrongly formulated tautology: the Tibetan term had to create the new concept, not to translate it. Translation is possible where both languages have words for a concept; if we call the work oldie Lo tsa ba 'translation', it is either incorrect or a courtesy: for he had to concoct Tibetan words for the Sanskrit original. Linguists might call this a one-zero relational process.

I believe that the cumbersome but accurate terminology of contemporary analytic philosophy has to be used to outgrow terminological nonchalance, even at the risk of having to adopt tools which so far belonged to another discipline. It seems to me that the philosophical analyst's apparatus may at times tempt us to ascribe too much sophistication to the Indian and Tibetan pundits. I think Guenther often yields to this temptation his translation of sGam.po.pa sometimes reads like a psychologist's manual. The danger can be avoided if we consistently use the modern terminology under a special rubric the Indian and Tibetan philosophers' categories are intuitive ones, those of western philosophy are discursive postulates, from the crude Aristotelian 'Laws of Thought' to today's logical calculi. Hence if we translate, for instance, 'sons' by 'causal characteristic of mind', our rubric which we may call an 'intuition-rubric' would read somewhat like: 'given that the word is used not as connoting a discursive or cognitive category but as corroborating an intuitive (i.e. non-discursive) experience' sems (citta) means 'causal characteristic of mind'; `bdag med (anatman) means 'non-individuality', etc.

I now proceed with some typical paradigms. I shall concentrate, in this chapter, on terms of the 'mind' class which in. a special sense is almost coextensive with Buddhist terminology in general, 'mind' in its widest sense being all that exists particularly with the Yogacara School which provided Tantric Buddhism with its theological superstructure, sharing a hard core with the older Madhyamika teachings.

sems (citta)

Jaeschke was ignorant of the doctrinal meaning of this term in theology. In the first place, he equated it with Sanskrit sattva ('being'). S. C. Das placed it last in his enumeration of three Sanskrit equivalents; and rightly so, because in theological parlance `sems' translates `sattva' only in terms like 'mahasattva' (sems dpa cen po). It is hardly astonishing that not one of Jaeschke's English renditions was determined by a passage of theological significance he adduces only instances of trivial use, like 'sem khan du chud pa', one very much grieved', `sem chun ba', a timid mind', etc. As English equivalents he lists the vague 'spirit'-'mind'-'soul'. But these are inapplicable in any Tibetan or Indian Buddhist context; I suspect he used `sems' to render the Christian 'soul' for the benefit of his flock. None of these English terms are useful in Buddhist terminology.

S. C. Das does not fare much better. He was right about his Sanskrit equivalents, citta, manas, sattva, if his arrangement does imply descending semantical frequency!' He lists 'soul' (qualifying it 'as power of moral volition'), 'spirit'; 'the heart where the soul resides'; 'mind'.

There are two ways to produce a correct translation of this and other equally fundamental terms; we either look for a phrase which can serve as a common denominator whenever the word occurs. Thus, Guenther wrote in a different context `In the case of sems, we might use "spirituality" as a common denominator term'. 

The alternative would be to use an adequate paraphrase culled from analytical terminology each time the term occurs, putting the original in parentheses; the term is used as an operational counfer by the pandit and the Tibetan translator, and he knows its particular import from the context which can, of course, not be known through any occidental translation using vague generic terms. For example, we might say: `mental events (sems) recurrent associative event (sems) etc. Personally, I would incline towards the second method. There is the possibility of a combination of the two methods, if we agree that a particular occidental term be used as an `operational counter' each time the Tibetan `operational counter' appears in the text, provided the former is never used to translate any other original term. Thus, if we choose `spirituality' for `sems', we must not use 'spirituality'. to render any other term, like 'thugs'; at least not as long as we do not know for certain that 'thugs' and `sems' arc not complete synonyms in scholastic literature.

The most frequent amplification of sems is sems pa, which is the equivalent of Sanskrit caitta. This is a term which can be rendered most precisely by 'motivation'. The `chos mrion pa kun las btus pa' (Abhidarmasatnuccaya) identifies 'karma' with 'Motivation' in analytical philosophy includes both the urge to perform an action and the goal of the action in a teleological sense."

In an important article, Guenther elucidates some of these terms. He says, 'it has been customary to translate the terms sems (citta)" and "sems las byung ha (caitta)" by "mind" and "mental event" respectively. But this translation, however philologically correct, does not tell us much until we know what is meant by these terms in relation to each other. At first sight, the relation is comparable with that which common sense assumes to exist between "thing" and the "states of the thing". In this particular (i.e. the Buddhist tantric notion-A.B.) case, mind (sems, citta) would be the "thing" and mental event (sems las byung ba, caitta) the "state of the thing".

This is borne out by an important tantric text, which says 'this mind under consideration, when it has been changed by conditions such as trances and dispositions, should be known as only a state of mind'." Hence, whenever `sems (citta) occurs together with `sems las byung ba' (caitta), we might translate it as 'conditioned mind' and 'state of mind' respectively. The necessity of separate renderings of 'sons' becomes evident from these two examples. In one case, when it translates `citta' we use 'conditioned mind'; and in the other, when it translates `cetanci' we use 'motivation'; now compare these different renditions for meaningfulness, with the common rendering of 'sons' as 'mind', regardless of its context. The Tibetan translators had something more specific in mind than just 'mind'. This example is important for any future study of the development of ideas in Buddhism. `Citta' in Pali is best rendered as `attituele'.'s It goes without saying that Rhys Davis, Oldenberg, and the other old-timers in Pali Buddhism constantly used 'mind' and its other occidental synonyms. I suggest that the development of Pali `citta' into tantric `citta' (sems), i.e. from 'attitude' to a `conditioned mind', is sound psychology. `Mind' generally used as Gampopa's 'operational counter' is conditioned by constantly recurring attitudes; in strict Yogicara argument it is actually but the nominalistically conceived sum-total of attitudes.

I have come to regard terminological susceptibilities as an important tool for tracing religious axioms. To use this example `citta' when used by a Brahmin scholar always means something like `mindstuff ' Swami Vivekananda constantly translated 'dila' this way; no Buddhist of any school would ever think of any sort of 'stuff' when he hears `citta'.

yid (mamas)

Jaeschke again has soul, mind; Das adds 'intellect' and both explain 'especially the powers of perception and imagination'. 'Soul' is impossible anyway; but whereas `sems' might be translated 'mind' as an operational counter, 'mind' should never be used to render 'yid' (manas). The 'powers of perception and imagination' are subsumed under all Buddhist terms of the epistemological order, the description is too wide to be of use. The precise role of 'yid' (manas) in Buddhist tantra and in Yogicira is that of conceptualization. Guenther puts it this way, 'it is that function event which is particularly concerned with conceptualization'. The Vajrayana phrase `amanasikara' (Tibetan yid la mi byed pa) implies the important meditation-hint 'not to conceptualize' the various forms that arise in the course of the contemplative's training.

In early scholastic literature, the epistemological term sems (citta), yid (manas) and rnam par 'es pa (vijnana) are as yet used synonymously (Abliidharmakoia II, 34). In tantric times, this is no longer the case; as in all scholastic philosophy, progress involved subtler terminological distinction. Yid (manas), in tantric Buddhism, transmits sensations to its centre for their interpretation. Once this interpreting function subsides as a result of the prescribed meditative processes, the individual's notions about external objects vanish and the yid (limas) is harmonized with its origin; there is no conception whatever left. 

This basis is not a substratum in the Brahmanical sense (which later incidentally converges with the Thomistic notion of a `substratum'), but a sort of pool into which things merge and from which they arise again. I think it could be likened to a 'flying start' in a horse-race: the 'flying-start' is not really a location but a function located on a particular line. The Yogacara call this the 'alayavijnana (kun ghi rnam par Les pa), the 'consciousness-receptacle' (Frauwallner translates it `Schatzkammerbewusstsein' which sounds very nice but does not seem too helpful).

Guenther does use 'mind' for 'yid' once in a while against his own knowledge of the specific use of 'yid', but in the same book he paraphrases it as 'workings of the mind'. Considering the above, I would render 'yid (manas) 'interpreting function' or 'conceptualizing function'. Rnam par Les pa (vijnana) The non-scholastic meaning of `vijficina' in Sanskrit and the derived languages is simply 'consciousness' or, sometimes, 'intellect'. In Buddhist theology, however, it is a key term, being the quintessence of the radical idealist school (Vijtianavada or Yogacara); 

In their world view, which at times seems to me to be dangerously close to solipsism, the term covers the entire natural realm, somewhat in a Berkeleyan fashion except that esse is a totaliter percipi, there being no divine mind as a separate ontological ens. Popular literature on Buddhism (Humphreys, Glascnapp) uses 'subjective-objective' and tries to explain how the objective merges in the subjective; which is an outsider's diction, there being no 'objective' of any kind in Vijnanavada nor, for that matter, in any important school of Buddhism. Jaeschke lists 'perfect knowledge, consciousness'; 'perceptions, cognitions' (i.e. as one of the five skandhas or aggregates phun po); and the inevitable 'soul', even though only that of the departed. Then, however, Jaeschke adds something very wise in parentheses: 'the significations. I presume, should be distinguished, as is done here, according to the different spheres in which they are used and not to be explained out of the other'.

Writer – Agehananda Bharati

Marwar School Painting

June 10, 2013, 12:43 am

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After the Mewar school, the grandeur of the Marwar school of painting is well expressed in the Jodhpur style, the Bikaner style and the world-famed Kishangarh style as well as in the substyles of Jaisalmer, Naugore, Ghanerao, Sirohi, Ajmer. The Kishangarh style has a unique character, but being in a state of Rathores painting there should be linked with the traditions of Jodhpur.

Like Mewar, Maru Pradesh followed the traditions of Ajanta. Its preliminary form may be seen from the artistic shape of the gate of Mandore.' This region attained fame in the domain of art and culture under the rule of the Gurjara-Pratiharas.

Tara Nath, a Tibetan pilgrim, referred to Sridhar as an artist of the 7^thcentury in Maru Pradesh. This confirms that the Marwar school of painting had its own earlier traditions. In ancient times, this territory was a part of Gujarat state, and that is why the paintings of western Rajasthan cannot be dissociated from the developed form of the Gujarat, Jain, Apbhransh and other styles. It is assumed that many pictorial Jain and Apbhransh texts were executed in Marti Pradesh. In reality, Rajasthan painting emerged from the Jain and Apbhransh styles. Western Rajasthan remained the centre of these styles.

Rashtrakoot Rajputs established their rule in ancient Maru Pradesh. The art of painting developed in Jodhpur under Jodha of the Rathore dynasty, in Bikaner under Bikaji, in Kishangarh under Kishan Singhji. In the neighbouring states it was known as the Marwari school of painting, which flourished in many styles and substyles.

Jodhpur Style

After establishing his kingdom, Jodhaji contributed impressively to the prosperity and enrichment of Indian culture in this new field. The Jain, Gujarat and Apbhransh styles were revived in new form. Credit goes to Maldeo (1532-68) for giving renewed vigour to the cultural traditions and artistic perspectives of Marwar. Before him, the Marwar style maintained its complete mastery over the Jodhpur style, but MaIdeo carved out an independent Marwar and devoted himself to the growth of the arts. From the point of view of primitive art, the Uttaradhyayan Sutra of his time, now preserved in Baroda Museum, occupies a prominent place. Glimpses of paintings of that age may also be visualised in the frescoes of Chaukhela Palace.

Many paintings of the early 17th century belong to the Jodhpur style, and even though highly influenced by the Mewari style possess their original character. Many paintings of the time of Raja Shur Singh (1595-1620) are preserved in the art and picture gallery of Baroda and in the private collection of Sangram Singh. Shur Singh was an art lover. Dhola-Marit is among the artistic historical pictorial texts compiled during his period and the Bhagwad of Pustak Prakash, Jodhpur, painted in 1610, is endowed with many special local features.

Rag-Main, an illustrated text painted in 1623 and preserved in the private collection of Sangram Singh, is a compilation of great historical value painted for the famous Vitthal Dass of Pali. These paintings are considerably influenced by the art of Marwar.

Some miniatures based on verses of Sursagar in the middle of the 17^th century in the Jodhpur style are preserved in Baroda Museum and in the collection of Sangram Singh. They express poetic sentiments elegantly. Rasikpriya, also available in Baroda Museum, was painted in the same period. Its sharpness of colour combination and abundance of ornament deserve special mention.

Another phase of Jodhpur art started in the reign of Maharaja Jaswant Singh, a man of high intellectual qualities and a keen lover of art. In his reign, Marwar became an important centre of the Krishna-Bhakti cult, which became the subject of many paintings. Jaswant Singh was the commander-in-chief of Aurangzeb hence the impact of Mughal art was inevitable.

The impact of the Mughal school in its original form has been noted in the Jodhpur style paintings of this period. They are very simple, and the sharp outlines, the expression of sentiments and colour combination in these paintings are notable. Because of the spread of the Krishna-Bhakti cult, the effect of folk art on the Jodhpur school calls for study. Traditions of folk painting were a common feature of the Jodhpur style.

Because of the great valour and courage of Durga Dass, the reign of Ajit Singh was a landmark in the annals of the development of Rajasthani art. Paintings of that age had themes like Rasikpriya, Geet-Govind, poetical texts and aspects of the royal court, hunting, festivals, processions, pictures of kings and feudal lords. Royal patronage in the reigns of Abhaya Singh and Rain Singh to artists in the Jodhpur style was generous. In the 19^th century, the Nath sect dominated the life of Marwar.

In 1803, the last phase of the Jodhpur style opened in the reign of Maharaja Man Singh. Avasji Deo Nath was the spiritual guide of Man Singh," and painting flourished in many monasteries. Sixty-three paintings of this period based on the Ras-Raj of Mati Ram were recovered from a monastery belonging to the Nath sect and are preserved in the private collections of Ram Copal Vijayavargia and Sangram Singh and in the State Museum, Jaipur.

Though in this period many paintings in the Jodhpur style were produced they were not of high artistic quality. In towns like Kuchman, Naugore, Pali, Jalore, feudal lords also encouraged painting after building galleries.

In the middle of the 19th century, with the-advent of photography, the Jodhpur style, like other styles of painting, started deteriorating.

Salient Features

The Jodhpur style is the principal style of the Marwar school, but even today a large number of paintings in this style are not available, and whatever is available belongs to the early part of the 19^th century. Despite being influenced by the Mewar school, the Jodhpur style has its own striking features, and as a result its separate constitution comes to light.

Males in this style are stoutly built and tall. Their curved mustaches, touching their throats, raised turbans and dress decorated with royal splendour are very impressive. The limbs of females are shapely and plump.

Besides local influences, the impact of the Mughal style also deserves special consideration. Application of folk art, combinations of red and yellow, depiction of feudal splendourand of simple life are also highlights of this style. Where drawings of palaces and palatial buildings were made extensively, in respect of scenery, paintings were created to suit the tastes of the capitalists of Marwar.

Principal artists of this style whose names have been identified include Virji (1623), Narayan Dass (1700), Bhatti Amar Dass (1750), Chhajju Bhatti, Kishen Dass (1800), Danna (1810), Bhatti Shiv Dass, Dev Dass, Jit Mal (1825), Kalu Ram (1831). The Jodhpur style is the principal style of the Marwar school and requires a great deal of research work.

Bikaner Style

In distant Maru Pradesh, the state of Bikaner was founded by Rao Bikaji of the Rathore dynasty in 1488. Being an integral part of Marwar and belonging to the same dynasty of Jodhpur, the artistic heritage of Bikaner is recognised as a signifi-cant link in the traditions of the Marwar school. Although influenced by many external forces, Bikaner maintains its original form intact. According to the artistic and other styles of Rajasthan, painting in Bikaner commenced its development from the end of the 16th century.

Early paintings in the Bikaner style may be traced to the pictorial Bhagwad Puran painted in the time of Rai Singh (1571-1591).8 He himself compiled the Rai Singh Mahotsav and Jyotish Ratnak texts. The impact of the Jain school is easily discern-ible in the early paintings of Bikaner. Matheran was a Jain monk who started painting Jain religious texts and exhibited the impact of the Jain school in the original Bikaner style.

The Mughal paintings of this region distinctly depict this mutual influence. Maharana Rai Singh had married Jasmade, daughter of Maharana Udai Singh (1537-1572). His second marriage took place in Jaisalmer in 1592, hence Bhagwad Puran (1599 approx.) in Bikaner style, Madhavanal Kamkalanda (1603) compiled and painted for Kunhar Raj of Jaisalmer, and Chor Panchashika (1540) compiled by Bilhan in the Mewar style and Rag-Mala (1605) painted by Nasir Di exhibit great similarity from the angles of techniques and selection of colours.

Kalyan Mal, Raja of Bikaner, established relations with the Mughals after marrying his daughter to Emperor Akbar. The rulers of Bikaner occupied prominent positions in Mughal courts." Maharana Rai Singh, who held the exalted position of governor of Burhanpur in the south from 1604 to 1611, made a good collection of artifacts. In this regard the illustrated texts of Rag-Mala are very significant.

Hence the emergence of the Bikaner style appears to date back to the later part of the 16th century. The seccind phase of the Bikaner style began in the period of Anup Singh (1669-1698), but the middle link of this style was no less significant. Because of the non-availability of paintings nothing definite can be said about this period. In the reigns of Jehangir and Shah jahan very cordial relations were maintained with the Bikaner royal house.

Because of this fact mutual exchanges of art and artists frequently took place. The oldest specimen of the Bikaner style is a painting by Noor Mohammad, son of Saha Mohammad, in 1606. A large number of such paintings are preserved in museums and private collections, and a systematic study of paintings of that age could be undertaken with their help.

In the reign of Shahjahan the number of artists greatly increased and many migrated to other places to receive royal patronage. Because of the indifferent attitude of Emperor Aurangzeb to artistic activities, artists sought patronage in the princely states of Rajasthan. The renowned Usta family of Bikaner, which was concentrated in Lahore in the Mughal period, joined the courts of Maharajas Karni Singh and Anup Singh at Bikaner in the reign of Aurangzeb. In paintings in the Bikaner style, the name of the artist along with that of his father and sanvant are engraved. Usta Asir Khan came to Bikaner from Delhi in the time of Karni Singh (1650) and developed a high sense of artistry.

Maharaja Anup Singh was a man of great literary taste and artistic temperament, hence he had a high regard for artists from Delhi and Lahore." These artists had been specialists in the Mughal style, but after going to Bikaner they had executed many paintings based upon Hindu legends, and Sanskrit, Rajasthani and Hindi poems as fitted the taste of their master. These have been recognised as fine specimens of the Bikaner style after the adoption of Rajput culture.

Dr Raghuvir Singh observes that a new synthetic Indian culture emerged in the reigns of the Great Mughals and these diverse influences had again begun to mingle and flourish in the royal courts." In the period of Maharaja Anup Singh this development attained its unique character.

His courtier Mussabir Ruknuddeen played a significant role in this process. He executed hundreds of paintings such as those entitled Keshav's Rasikpriya and Barahmasa. His whole family accepted fully the Bikaner style of painting. His son Sahabudin executed many paintings on themes of the Bhagwad Puran and his grandson Kayam painted in the Bikaner style at the beginning of the 18th century.

In the time of Anup Singh, Munna La11, Mukund, Chandu LaII and others belonging to the Matheran family also made their special contribution to the development of the Bikaner style. Artists from the Matheran and Usta families elevated the Bikaner style to its climax of glory in the reign of Anup Singh, whose pictorial texts and miniatures are preserved in the National Museum, the Baroda Museum and the private collection of Maharaja Karni Singh.

In the 18^th century the Bikaner style witnessed its third phase. With the steady downfall of the Mughals, the Bikaner style had freed itself from the impact of the Mughal style, and because of matrimonial alliances the Bikaner style was greatly influenced by the styles Of Jaipur, Bundi, Mewar and Pahari besides others. The impact of the Kishangarh style upon paintings of this period is quite discernible. In this period painters created an absolute Rajasthani style.

Artists of the Matheran family however continued to maintain their traditions. They had drafted copies of the Jain texts, and compiled such texts on festive occasions. They drew personal pictures of kings to be presented to them. Many paintings engraved with the names of artists like Munna Lall, Mukund (1668), Ram Kishan (1770), Jai Kishan Matheran, Chandu Lall (1678) along with sanvants may be viewed even today.''

Leading artists of the Usta family of that period include Kayam, Kasim, Abu Harnid, Shah Mohammad, Ahmad Al Sahabudin, Jivan who had brilliantly depicted Rasikpriya, Barah-masa, Ragragini, Krishna Lila, hunting, mehafil and royal splendour .

The Bikaner style further accelerated the process of developing frescoes in the Rajasthani tradition, palaces of Bikaner fort and many cenotaphs.

In Bikaner, superb paintings were drawn on wooden boards showing Radha-Krishna as in the wooden doors of the National Museum.'" Drawings on the hides of camels are a unique feature of the Bikaner style.

Salient Features

Because of Bikaner state's close ties with the Mughal court all salient characteristics of the Mughal style are quite visible in early paintings of the Bikaner style. Many critics therefore term it a provincial Mughal style. But drawings of slim and attractive females with eyes resembling those of deer, the frequent application of blue, green and red colours, turbans of the style of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb along with the high pagans of Marwari fashion, camels, deer and the Bikaneri style of living and the impact of Rajput culture make us believe it is a distinct style.

Rulers of Bikaner often served as governors of the Mughals on the southern frontier hence the impact of the southern style on Bikaner art is considerable. Tall and slim maidens, minute drawings of cypress and coconut trees, fountains playing and application of green colours are especially worth seeing. From the southern fronts, Rajput soldiers and artists used to return via Vijayanagar, Golconda, Ahmednagar, Malwa, hence the influence of the art of that region had its impact on local art.

In the Bikaner style, abrupt linings, delicate drawings and minute lines had particularly been drawn. Arrangement of linings was very impressive. In place of bright colours soft ones were applied. Application of red, violet, white, brown and blue had frequently been made in this style. Ornaments of beads too were frequently marked.

The manner of dressing was a synthesis of Mughal and Rajput styles. As the Kishangarh style women are drawn tall, with eyes resembling those of khanjan birds and tight blouses and lambs, goats, camels, dogs and desert landscapes drawn in the Bikaner style in the 18th century. In later styles, drawings of fringed clouds are worth seeing in the frescoes of Chandra Mahal, Lall Niwas and Sardar Mahal. Drawings of sand dunes influenced by Persian and Chinese art, mountains and foliage deserve special mention.

The Matheran and Usta families had developed the Bikaner style. Even today their descendants produce paintings on auspicious occasions such as marriages. A last ray of light of the Usta family, Hissamudin, had been internationally ac-claimed for his drawings on the hides of camels.

Kishangarh Style

The Kishangarh style of painting occupies a significant position in relation to Rajasthani painting. A style of painting which flourished in the royal court of an erstwhile tiny state located near Ajmer is famous. Credit for making it known goes to Eric Dickinson and Dr Fayaz Ali.

Kishangarh state was founded by the eighth son of Raja Udai Singh of the Rathore dynasty of Jodhpur state in 1609. Raja Kishan Singh was accorded the status of a commander leading a thousand infantrymen and 500 cavalry by Em-peror Jehangir. Closely connected with Jodhpur state and the Mughal court, the rulers of that state were conversant with the royal culture and sophisticated way of living. In the developed state of the Marwar school the Kishangarh style had acquired its unique and glorious position in the realm of Rajasthani painting after having ascended to the pinnacle of glory in the time of Savant Singh.

Raja Roop Singh, fifth in lineage (1648-1658), made' Roop Nagar his capital to avoid some strategic difficulties which had existed under the rule of Savant Singh. Roop Singh was a man of outstanding intellect endowed with a kindly heart. Like his forefathers, he had been initiated into the Vallabha sect and adopted the cult of Krishna as a way of life and means of salvation. Contemporary artists had started painting various modes of the Radha-Krishna tradition to convert these myths into reality to keep their master pleased."

After Roop Singh came Raja Man Singh (1658-1706), himself a distinguished poet as well as patron of the poets and art. He was guided by the famous poet Brind in the art of poetry. A devotee of the Vaishnav sect, he was keenly interested in subjects pertaining to the Bhakti cult. He was also an artist in his own right. Some paintings belonging to his time are preserved in the Kapad Bhandar of Kishangarh."

In the growth of painting in this region his son Raj Singh (1706-1748) also played a major role. Raj Singh was an extraordinarily brave person endowed with a strictly religious temperament as well as artistic bent of mind. He himself compiled 33 texts which greatly influenced artists of that age. From this time the king-designate, Raja Savant Singh, was much influenced by his father's dedication to art. His education and religious initiation had been performed as his father desired to live in an artistic environment. He was at home as much in Sanskrit as in music. He also took a keen interest in painting. Four paintings in the private collection of the Kishangarh royal family bear testimony to this.

Savant Singh had cultivated a great taste for poetry early in life. From 1723 to 1731 he contributed significantly to expanding the volume of poetry dedicated to Krishna-Bhakti after compiling Manorath Man jar, Rasik Ratnavali, Bihari Chan-drika. Like their forefathers they had been initiated in the Vallabha sect by their spiritual master Ran Chhor Dass.

In the style of painting created in the middle of the 18th century new trends are visualised. The pleasant temperament of Radha-Krishna is depicted in the new form. To provide fine shapes to this style, credit goes to the royal courtier-aim-artist Mordhavaj Nihal Chand. Hundreds of paintings by him remain as an invaluable heritage. The grandfather of Nihal Chand, Surdhavaj Moot Raj, came from Delhi to serve as Raja Man Singh's diwan.

Later artists of his generation contributed to the growth of the Kishangarh style. Nihal Chand illustrated the brush poetry of Nagri Dass from 1735 to 1738. After Nagri Dass's Vrindavanbass, drawings of Mussavir Ni hal Chand continued to appear in the state, but in these later drawings his magic touch was missing.

The painting of this age is often associated with the love life of Vanithani and Nagri Dass, but this is not historically true. The former ruler of Kishangarh denied this view and stated: "Vanithani was a state singer whose status in the royal family resembled that of a mother for her sister. But it was a different matter that Vanithani had herself been a singer and poetess. Paintings of that time might have been influenced by her impact."

Ancestors of Diwan Surdhavaj Moo! Raj significantly contributed to the growth of Kishangarh art, Sita Ram and Badan Singh stand eminent among them. Drawings of Amroo and Suraj Mal are ascribed to the period of Nagri Dass. The artist Nanak Ram also created many paintings in the time of the brother of Nagri Dass. Artistic workmanship performed by Ram Nath and Joshi Swami Ram, ancestors of Nanak Ram, in the period of Raja Birad Singh (1782-1788) was greatly admired. In the regime of Raja Kalyan Singh (1798-1838) an artist named Ladli Dass played a very striking role in the development of the Kishangarh style. A renowned painting titled Geet-Govind was also created in the same period.

By and by the eternal quality of the Kishangarh style began to lose its distinct character. Its deterioration began to be visible in paintings in the reign of Prithvi Singh (1840-1880). After this period, the Kishangarh style was lost in oblivion.

Salient Features

The Kishangarh style possesses some distinct features which maintain its unique identity. Drawings of limbs of males and females, colourful paintings of nature, arrangement of colours, illustrations of themes connected with the Radha-Krishna cult are some distinct features of this style.

Male figures are tall, of attractive physique with blue aura-like bunch as of hair, elevated turbans, with strings of pearls in white or blue, symmetrically developed forehead, thin lips and wide and attractive eyes stretched to the ears like khanjan birds are some unique features of the Kishangarh style. On the whole the eyes occupy such an important position that the viewer is first drawn to that spot. Pointed chin, long neck resembling a surahi of water, strong arms, round and tender fingers, transparent gowns draped down to the feet, and the whole body covered with ornaments and flowers are very distinct in the Kishangarh style.

Female figures are fair in complexion, and their wide eyes are adorned with kajal.

Semi-developed but firm breasts, body covered with lehnga, odhni and kanchuki and decorated with flowers and ornaments are salient features and half-blossomed buds of lotus in the hands exhibit the charm and beauty of the nayika-like Radha.

The natural perspective of Kishangarh and Roopangarh was endowed with lakes, mountains, gardens, various birds, and accordingly drawings of nature showed frequently large lakes spread far and wide, swans sporting in them, ducks, jahnugabi, cranes, bagula, heron and boats afloat and at anchor. Krishna engaged in romantic affairs in boats. Large buildings, white parapets covered with creepers, fountains and ponds covered with flowering lotus together make the Kishangarh style charming. Similar drawings were created in the Bundi style too, showing the love play of Radha-Krishna in the full moonlight, drawings of morning and evening clouds in crimson.

The Kishangarh style has its own combination of colours. To express tender sentiments of Radha-Krishna artists often used light colours. The principal colours were white, rose, cream and deep red. Margins are drawn in rose and green.

Writer – Jai Singh Neeraj 

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Zehir-ed-Din Muhammad Babur

June 11, 2013, 2:27 am

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Zehir-ed-Din Muhammad Babur was born on February 14, 1483 in Andijan in Farghana. This place is in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. His father Umar Sheikh Mirza, a Turk and a descendant of Timur was the ruler of Farghana. His mother Khutlugh Nigar KhAnum was a descendant of Chingiz Khan. So both from the father's and mother's side he could claim an ancestry of unique distinction.

FAR GHANA

Babur spent the first eleven years and a quarter of his life in Farghand while his father was busy extending the frontiers of his small principality. He learnt his mother tongue Turki as well as Persian and also practised archery and horse riding. His father died in 1494 in the fort of Akshi due to the collapse of a pigeon house where he was feeding pigeons.

Babur succeeded his father as ruler of Farghana at the age of twelve. His rule of Far-ghana for twenty one years was a period of turmoil. His chief ambition in this period was to conquer the prestigious city of Samarkand built by his ancestor Timur, which was a great cultural centre of the Islamic world. This brought him into conflict with his uncles; Ahmad Miranshahi and Mahmud ChaghatAi, and later on with Shaibani Khan, the leader of Mongolo-Turkish tribe called the Uzbegs. Samarkand was a city of gardens dotted with mausoleums, including Gur-Amir, the tomb of Timur ornamented with magnificent blue tiles. It also had the observatory of Ulugh Beg, which contained a gigantic quadrant with which he compiled his famous astronomical tables.

Baur undertook two campaigns to conquer Samarkand. In 1497 after a siege of seven months he captured Samarkand. During his stay in Samarkand the nobles in Farghana taking advantage of his absence handed over a part of the state territory to his younger brother Jahangir. In February 1498 Babur left Samarkand to reconquer Farghand. He could not retrieve the lost territory and also lost Samarkand. He was forced to spend the winter in the fort of Khujand, and supported himself as well his soldiers by raiding the neighbouring villages. This was a period of great misery for him, but he kept up his courage.

Babur won back the lost territory from Jahangir who was supported by Ahmad Tambal when he defeated them at Khuban in 1499. During this year he was married to Ayisha-Sultan Begam. She did not attract him much and he mentions that out of modesty and bashfulness, he used to see her only occasionally. In fact, his indifference to his wife was due to the fact that he was infatuated with a youth named Baburi.

In 1500 Babur again attacked Samarkand. Shaibani Khan who was then the ruler of Samarkand was camping in one of the gardens outside the city walls. Babur's soldiers scaled the city walls and with the co-operation of the inhabitants, who were disgusted with the savage rule of Shaibani Khan, occupied the city. After some months Shaibani Khan returned with a large force and besieged the city. Supplies were cut off, the garrison was starved and Baur was forced to surrender. He was also compelled to give his elder sister Khanzada in marriage to Shaibani Khan. One night accompanied by his mother and a few loyal followers he escaped from Samarkand.

This was another dark period for Babur and he sought refuge with his uncles in the area around Tashkent. Shaibani Khan not only had Samarkand, but had also captured a large slice of territory of Farghana. In 1504 Babur was in a desperate situation, and only a handful of loyal soldiers remained with him.

KABUL

When in 1504 everything appeared to have been lost, Babur with his three hundred and odd followers crossed the Hindu Kush in a snow storm, stumbled into Kabul and made him-self the master of a principality named after that city. Thus began the second phase of his career. For the next twenty-two years, he was the king of Kabul which roughly corresponded to the modern Afghanistan and included Badakshan. From 1504 to 1513, with Kabul as his base, Babur again tried to conquer Samarkand. This ambition was fulfilled almost absolutely in October 1511 when he entered that city "in the midst of such pomp and splendour as no one has ever heard of before or ever since." Babur's dominions now reached their widest extent: from Tashkent and Sairam on the borders of the deserts of Tartary, to Kabul and Ghazni and the Indian frontier. It included within its boundaries Samarkand, Bokhara, Hissar, Kunduz and Farghana. But this glory was as shortlived as it was great. Uzbeg chiefs from whom Babur had snatched Samarkand in October 1511 returned to attack the city in June 1512 and inflicted a crushing defeat on Babur. Babur was forced to flee from one part of his dominions to another. He lost everywhere and finally returned to Kabul early in 1513.

The reason for Babur's discomfiture in the second half of 1512 lay in his understanding with Shah Ismael Safavi of Persia for the capture of Samarkand. For the Shah's support Babur had agreed to hold the Samarkand kingdom as his vassal, become a convert to the Shia faith, adopt all its symbols, and to impose the Shia creed on the orthodox Sunni subjects of the conquered kingdoms. This unprincipled compromise made Baur extremely unpopular with his Sunni subjects and enabled the Uzbeg chiefs to stage a come back at Samarkand.

In Kabul, Baur found time and leisure to indulge in his favourite hobby of gardening. Apart from Beigh-i-wafa ten gardens are mentioned as made by him viz., the Shahr-ãrã (Town-adorning), which contained very fine plane-trees, the Char-bagh, the Bagh-i-jalau-khanei, the Aarta-biigh (Middle-garden), the Saurat-bagh, the Bligh-i-inahtab (Moonlight-garden), the Bilgh-i-ahu-khana (Garden-of-the-deer-house), and three smaller ones. In these gardens he held his feasts and drink parties.

HINDUSTAN

Babur now diverted his restless ambition to India. To be sure of success he took one of the most important steps of his life. Profiting from the example of Shah Ismael, he began building up effective artillery and sometimes between 1514 and 1519 secured the services of an Ottoman Turk. Named Ustad Ali, who became his master of ordnance.

Having, thus, strengthened his fighting machine a great deal, Babur started a probe into Hindustan. Early in 1519, he went in for what is called his first expedition in India. He stormed Bdjaur which offered a spirited resistance but was ultimately forced to accept defeat before Babur's artillery. Babur massacred the population of the city to avenge the losses he had suffered as a result of the unexpected resistance of the people of Bajaur, but more so to warn the people of other cities of the fate awaiting them if they chose to resist his army. His purpose was well served. When he reached Bhera on the Jhelum, no resistance was offered. That encouraged him to claim for the first time entire north-western India on the plea that it once formed part of Timur's empire. Perhaps he would have followed this claim with a deeper penetration in the interior of the Punjab if he was not told that back home a conspiracy was being hatched against him.

In September 1519 Babur invaded Hindustan again. This was his second expedition to Hindustan. He marched through Khyber, subdued the turbulent Yusafzai tribe and provisioned the Peshawar fort for future operations. He was forced to give up his ambition of going further at this stage because of disturbing news from Badakshan.

After taking possession of Badakshan, Babur marched into India on his third expedition early in 1520. As in his first expedition, now also he first went to Bajaur and from there proceeded to Ehera. But this time he did not stop at Bhera. Subduing the recalcitrant Afghan tribes, he proceeded to Sialkot which submitted without striking a blow. When he moved on to Saiyidpur, he met a tough resistance but ultimately succeeded in subduing the place. Perhaps with the same object in view that had motivated his massacre of the people of Bajaur two years ago, he mercilessly massacred the people of Saiyidpur. That could have been a prelude to his moving into Lahore but on hearing that the ruler of Kandahar, Shah Beg Khdn was marching on Kabul, he hastily returned to Kabul.

Babur did not invade India for the next four years. Between 1520 and 1522 he was busy subduing Shdh Beg. In the following two years he strengthened his position in Kandahar. But he had by no means given up the Indian project. He further improved his artillery by securing the services of Mustafa..., another Turkish expert.

Bdbur embarked on his fourth expedition to India in 1524 on the invitation of Daulat Khan Lodi, the powerful Wazir of the Punjab. He marched into the valleys of the Jhelum and the Chenab, and became the master of both Lahore and Dipalpur. Much to the disappointment of atulat Khan, who had invited Babur to serve his political ends, Babur now proclaimed the major part of what subsequently became the Lahore and Multan subas of the Mughal Empire as part of his Kabul kingdom. He appointed his own governors over these areas and offered Daulat Khan the petty governorship of the Jullundur Doab. Little wonder that no sooner Babur went back, Daulat Khan raised a big army to fight him.

Babur invaded India again in November 1525. This was his fifth invasion of India. Because he anticipated a tough resistance from Daulat Khan and also a sharp conflict with Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, he now went to India with "the largest army he had ever led into Hindustan." Daulat Khan's army melted away at his approach but with Ibrahim, Babur had to fight the most crucial battle of his life on 21 April, 1526, the First Battle of Panipat.

The First Battle of Panipat began the last phase of Babur's life. It is well known in all its details to the students of Indian history and may be briefly told. Babur states, "I placed my foot in the stirrup of resolution, and my hand on the reins of confidence in God, and marched against Sultan Ibrahim, the son of Sultan Sikandar, the son of Sultan Bahlol Lodi Afghan, in whose possession the throne of Delhi and the dominions of Hindustan at that time were; whose army in the field was said to amount to a hundred thousand men, and who, including those of his Amirs, had nearly a thousand elephants." For the first time in the history of India artillery was used in warfare. Ustad Kuli Khan was the master gunner of Babur. Indian elephants fled in terror on hearing the sound of artillery, trampling Ibrahim's soldiers. By mid-day the battle was over. Ibrahim Lodi, lay dead with 30,000 of his soldiers.

Soon after the battle of Panipat, Babur proclaimed himself as the Padshah of Hindustan with his headquarters at Agra. At Agra he laid a garden near the Jumna. During the heat of summer he sought refuge in this garden.

Babur defeated Rana Sangha in the battle of Khanna on 16 March, 1527, captured the fort of Chanderi on 29 January, 1528, and humbled the Afghans in the battle of Gogra on 6 May, 1529. Now he was master of northern India. He died on 26 December, 1530 at the age of forty-seven years, ten months and eleven days after an illness of more than six months. Thus ended a stormy career which culminated in the founding of Mughaldynasty which enormously enriched the cultural life of India. The Mughals gave India new architecture, terraced gardens with flowing water, and a new style of painting.

Writer – M.S. Randhawa

The Four Stages of Life

June 12, 2013, 3:07 am

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Just as each caste had its particular duties to follow, there is also the dharma of the four ashramas (or stages) in each of our lives.

Brahmachari or Student

The first stage is that of the Brahmachari or the stage of life of the student which began, in the case of the first three classes which educated their children, with the Upanayana or the thread ceremony. In ancient times girls were also given this initiation, as can be seen from temple sculptures where women also wear the sacred thread, but this was given up later on.

The three threads remind a young man of the Pranava (OM, the symbol of the Absolute), Medha (intelligence) and Shraddha (diligence), the three essential guides for education. He is taught the powerful Gayatri Mantra for the worship of the Sun so that he may absorb its brilliance and effulgence. In olden days students lived with their teacher or Guru in a gurukula (or school) usually set in the midst of a forest. The rich and the poor boy, the prince and the pauper, lived and studied together. It was a life involving service to the Guru and his family, the practice of Yoga, the study of the scriptures, the arts and the sciences, and a life of simplicity, celibacy and spartan self-discipline.

On their departure after the training was over, the Guru exhorted his pupils to speak only the truth, to work without forgetting Dharma, to serve elders, to remember the teachings of the Vedas and to regard one's mother, father, teacher and guest as divine beings to be revered and honoured.

The beauty of the life of the student in the guru kula has few parallels and the fall in the quality of education in schools and colleges today can be traced to the inadequate emphasis placed by present-day society on the totality of education and the need for it to encompass all aspects of a student's life and not book study alone. Equally serious today is the neglect of the study of our past leading to rootlessness amongst the young.

Also, it is essential today that we reintroduce at least a symbolic thread ceremony for all classes and sects of Hindus, for boys and girls, and through it initiate the young into their quest for knowledge.

Grihastha or Householder

The second stage in one's life is that of the Grihastha or householder. This stage begins when the student returns from his studies, marries and takes on the duties of a householder.

The Hindu marriage is a sacred step in one's spiritual growth, and not a contract. Like Goddess Parvati, the wife is ardhangini, part of her husband. No religious ritual can be performed by a man without his wife. No man's or woman's life is believed to be complete without marriage.

Every step taken in the marriage ceremony is symbolic.

The wedding ceremony takes place in front of Agni, the god of Fire. Agni personifies the power and light of the Great God. On one side of the fire is a pot of water for purification, and on the other, a flat stone.

At the start of the marriage ceremony, the father of the bride gives away his daughter, symbolic of Goddess Lakshmi, to the groom, who is deemed to be Vishnu himself. The mantra that is chanted is the same that was first recited by King Janaka while giving his daughter, Seeta, in marriage to Rama:

"This Seeta, my daughter, will be your helpmate in discharging your religious obligations. Take her hand in yours and make her your own. She will be your alter ego, ever devoted to you. She is blessed and will be as inseparable from you as is your shadow".

Then comes the panigrahana ceremony. Holding the bride's hand in his, the groom says, "I hold your hand for happiness. May we both live to a ripe old age. You are the queen and shall rule over my home. You are the Sama Veda, I am the Rig Veda", (implying that they are part of one another). "I am heaven and you are the earth. Let us marry and be joined together." The couples go around the fire and water thrice, clock-wise, while the groom says these words.

They then touch each other's hearts while the groom says, "Your heart I take in mine. Whatever is in your heart shall be in mine whatever is in mine shall be in yours. Our hearts shall be one, our minds shall be one. May God make us one". The bride then mounts the stone, symbolic of the strength of their union.

The couple then take the saptapadi or seven steps together during which the groom prays, "With the first step for food and sustenance, with the second step for strength, with the third step for keeping ours vows and ideals, with the fourth step for a comfortable life, with the fifth step for the welfare of our cattle, with the sixth step for our life together through all the seasons, and with the seventh step for fulfilling our religious duties". Walking hand in hand, taking seven steps together is symbolic of their lives together as man and wife and, equally, as close friends.

The bride prays to Agni, the god of Fire, to witness the marriage, for the prosperity of her new home. Water is sipped by the couple to wash away impurities and to start a new life.

On the wedding night, the groom is shown Dhruva (the Pole Star), and asked to be as unmoving and constant in his love and devotion as the child Dhruva was to Vishnu (for which he was turned into the unmoving Pole Star after death). The bride is shown the stars, Vasishta and Arundati (part of the Great Bear constellation, known as the Sapta Rishis or seven sages in Indian astronomy), symbolic of a devoted couple who are never separated and are always seen together in the skies.

All other customs, such as tying the man galasutra or thali, putting sindoor on the parting, and exchanging garlands are purely local social customs and not instrinsic or essential to the marriage ceremony. The existence of agni (fire) and taking the seven steps are basic essentials of a Hindu wedding. The marriage ceremony, if performed with faith, is considered of great spiritual merit to the parents of the bride who give away their precious daughter.

The word `vivaha' meaning marriage also means that which sustains Dharma or righteousness. It is realised that to make a marriage successful is difficult and requires great sacrifices and adjustability which also help develop character. It is the householder who practises right conduct (Dharma), earns material wealth (Artha), permits himself a life of love and passion (Kama) with his wife and attains salvation (Moksha).

Therefore the second stage, the ashrama of the Grihastha, is considered the most important of the four. The householder is expected to earn a living with integrity and by honest means and to give away one-tenth of what he earns in charity.

He is expected to give happiness and joy to his wife by providing her with a good home. It is obligatory for him to look after his children, educate and marry them.

Charity is essential in a married couple's life. Food is to be given to crows and birds, to cattle and other animals everyday. Hospitality and providing for one's guests are the main duties of a married couple who should not eat their main meal for the day without feeding a guest, a visitor, a relative or a poor man.

The Grihastha's life is full of social and spiritual obligations which challenge his capabilities to the hilt and try him sorely. His trials and tribulations in this period, if faced without deviation from Dharma, enable him to evolve into a superior human being with harmony as the key-note of his success.

Vanaprastha

Once one's grown-up children are settled and they are able to run their own lives and look after their young children, it is time for middle-aged couple to enter the third stage and to become Vanaprasthas or, literally, those who retire to the forest. In modern parlance this means that the time has come to detach oneself from the jungle of wordly desires and attachments, concentrate on philosophical study and retire to the sylvan peace of contemplation, meditation and spiritual pursuits.

Unfortunately, in today's world, few give up their wordly desires at any stage of their lives, so even the third stage is rarely reached as most people are still involved in the rat-race of making money and acquiring more and more consumer goods, each bigger and better than one's neighbour's.

At no time in the history of our land has this acquisitiveness reached the stage we are in today. Acquiring money by any means, fair or foul, aspiring for high positions, using money to gain political power, judging a man by his financial status in life, are some of the depths to which the Vanaprastha of today has fallen. These in turn have led to a widespread fall in values away from the Hindu ideal where the one most revered was not the king (with the wealth of the nation at his command) not the shopkeeper or merchant, but the mendicant and Sanyasi, who begged for alms even to feed himself.

Sanyasi

Out of those few who reach the Vanaprastha ashrama, barely a handful reach the fourth stage of the Sanyasa ashrama. One whostakes to Sanyasa gives up all wants, has no needs, does not accept money, and renounces the world. He lives on alms or the fruits of the forest and spends his time in meditation. He is beyond the rules and regulations of ordinary living and is a jivanmukta, or one liberated from ordinary life. Unfortunately visitors to our country think that all orange clad men (called sadhus or peaceful men) are holy men or Sanyasis. A few are, but the majorities are the "drop-outs" of Hindu society, often preying on the gullible.

Writer – Shakunthala Jagannathan

Rajput painting in rajasthan and central india

June 14, 2013, 2:16 am

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By the 15705 Akbar had succeeded in subduing nearly all the major Rajput kingdoms and in winning over their rulers by giving them command of his armies and marrying into their families: his chief queen and Jahangir's mother was a Rajput princess from Amber. Spending long periods at the imperial court, the rajas and their sons naturally began to imitate its customs and fashions. From around i600 sonic of them employed artists trained in the Mughal studio, who worked in a hybrid style of Hindu manuscript illustration which is usually called Popular Mughal. Later in the 17th century some of the rajas were able to employ more accomplished artists, skilled in the portrait styles of the Jahangir and Shah jahan periods. These and subsequent waves of Mughal influence had varying but sometimes profound effects on the local schools of Rajasthan and Central India, each of which assimilated the new conventions in differing degrees to their existing traditions, as represented for example by Bhairavi ragini.

The closest continuation of the pre-Mughal style appears in the boldly simplified designs and colour schemes used in the schools of Malwa and Bundclkhand. In a typical ragatnala picture, Bhairava raga is depicted in the form of Krishna conversing with a lady in a pavilion flanked by stylised flowering trees. The primitive expressive power of this style is scarcely affected by the Popular Mughal influence that was reaching the Rajasthani courts. It may be contrasted with a version of the same subject, in this case more correctly conceived: as Shiva (of whom Bhairava, 'the Terrible: is an epithet), who sits under a flayed elephant skin in a royal palace attended by maids. This picture belongs to a series painted at Chunar, near Bermes, in 1591 by artists trained iii Akbar's studio. Its judicious use of figural modelling and spatial recession as well as the decorative tile-work and arabesque borders of the painting are all Akbari features. The series must have belonged at an early date to the rulers of Bundi, whose imperial service brought them at one stage to Chunar, for its iconography established a norm for later Bundi ragamalas. At other courts manuscript illustration was similarlymodified by a more dilute Popular Mughal influence; (A version of Kakubha ragini, personified as a lovelorn lady whose charms pacify the wild blackbuck, is composed in an archaic series of registers and combines old-fashioned landscape conventions with elegantly attenuated figure drawing and a row of stylised Mughal flowers at the top.

During the second half of the 17^thcentury portraiture and genre scenes of the Mughal type were introduced at all the main courts, with varying degrees of adaptation to the Rajput vision. Jaswant Singh of Jodphur, who spent much of his life in the imperial service, chose to patronise work in a strongly Mughal style, as seen in an unfinished drawing of a durbar scene. However, in later painting at Jodphur, as elsewhere, this influence became muted and indigenous linear rhythms and colour schemes reasserted them-selves. Artists at the court of Kotah in particular brought a unique linear verve to animal subjects such as hunts and elephant fights. The tumultuous energy of the colliding beasts is evoked by fluid or densely swirling passages of line and dramatic distortions of anatomical form. This powerfully empathetic rendering can be contrasted with the flat decorativeness of the Jain painter's elephant, or with die rich colour effect and strictly naturalistic modelling of the Deccani and Mughal examples.

Even at the desert-locked court of Bikaner, where in the late 17th century migrant Muslim artist families had worked in a Mughal-derived style with some Deccani elements, Rajput conventions re-appeared within one or two generations. A picture of the autumn month of Karttik, from a Barahmasa series illustrating the activities of noble lovers during the twelve months of the year, displays a formalised composition, elongated figures and vague spatial relationships. A noble and lady stand before a pavilion with a bed-chamber; another bed is prepared on the roof. In the back-ground a couple play at chaupar, men bathe and women draw auspicious rangoli patterns on the ground:

A later and more lyrical fusion of the ardent sentiments of Hindu devotional poetry with the polished 18th century Mughal style occurred at Kishangarh, whose ruler, Savant Singh (1748-57), was himself air accomplished poet. The love sports of Krishna and Radha were depicted in palace and lakeside settings similar to those of Kishangarh, and may have been based on Savant Singh's love for a dancer at his court, with whom he eventually retired to the holy city of Brindabanput the perilously mannered sweetness of the Kishangarb style soon turned to a cloying sentimentality.

The Ranas of Mewar, who had long been regarded as the premier ruling family and the custodians of Rajput honour, had been the last to capitulate to the Mughals. During the 17^thcentury they continued their earlier traditions of manuscript illustration in a bright and forceful style modified by some Popular Mughal influence. But from the early i8th century the Udaipur artists' best work consisted of ambitious and original paintings of court life: portraits, durbars, processions, hunts, religious festivals and zenana scenes, often of unusually large size and full of anecdotal detail. Some of the better compositions made use of architectural settings adapted from the palace buildings at Udaipur. Individual portraits of the Mughal type, showing an isolated figure seated or standing in profile, were often wooden, but a curious study of an obese courtier in a striped pink pyjama has a keen satirical edge.

The dissolution of Mughal power in the 18th century was matched by a similar decline at the courts of Rajasthan. From the 1730s they were repeatedly overrun by the Marathas from the south, who brought about a political and economic chaos that lasted until the establishment of British suzerainty in 1818. Jaipur, which had been founded close to Amber by the distinguished astronomer Raja Sawai Jai Singh (1693-1743), is said to have reached depths of turpitude and intrigue exceptional even in an age of general decadence. But painting continued under its own inherent momentum. The Jaipur artists were much influenced by the hard contemporary style of Delhi and Lucknow. Even so, a hackneyed subject of a lady at her toilet could be transformed into a classically Rajput image by the accentuated outline drawing of the face and figure and the contrast of unmodelled flesh and background areas with the detail of jewellery, textile patterns and a flower gardefik A more ebullient late phase of Rajasthani painting occurred at Kotah under Rao Ram Singh (1827-65), who is seen passing in procession through a bazaar, entertained as he rides by a nautch girl supported on his elephant's tusks If this picture lacks the kinetic force of the earlier elephant fight, it still has much charm and panache. Already, however, a harsh synthetic green colour is in use. During the second half of the-19^th century traditional painting either succumbed or was radically changed by the impact of Western techniques and the sensational art of photography.

                 

Writer – Andrew Topsfield 

Hadoti School Painting

June 15, 2013, 4:31 am

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The role and influence of the rulers of the Chauhan dynasty were confined to the regions of Bundi, Kota and Jhalawar. Hence this area has been termed the Hadoti region. This area was a treasury of art. The oldest specimens of prehistoric rock paintings in Rajasthan are in the caves on the banks of the Chambal River near Kota. Its temple architecture and iconography were famous from ancient times. Many artistic temples located at Kansua, Badoli and Ramgarh testify to this fact.

Bundi Style

The style of painting that flourished wheh Bundi was ruled by Hada Rajputs is widely known as the Bundi style. The natural beauty of this place comprising mountains covered with luxuriant vegetation, lakes, streams and dense forests greatly influenced artists.

Historical Background

Till the middle of the 14^thcentury A.D. (Sanvant 1398), Bundi, founded by Rao Deva, was a leading Rajput state, but Bundi painting dated back to the time of Raja Surjan Singh (1594-1598). Having severed his relations with Mewar, he surrendered the fort of Ranthambor to Emperor Akbar and accepted the suzerainty of the Mughal Empire.' His grandson Rao Ratan Singh (1607-1631) received the title Sar-Buland Rai from Jehangir and established strong ties with the Mughals. Shatzusal, grandson of Rao Ratan Singh (1631-1658), patronised many artists in his state. His son Bhav Singh (1651-1681) was also a keen lover of art and encouraged his subjects to take keen interest in poetry, music and painting.

Poets like Mati Ram enjoyed the patronage of Bhav Singh, whose Lalit-Lallam and Ras Raj greatly impressed artists and lovers of art.' Bhav Singh and his son Anirudh Singh participated in wars in the south under the direction of the Mughals.

The southern style also influenced the Bundi style in the reign of Rao Budha Singh (1695-1731). In 1710 Rao Bhim Singh of Kota annexed Bundi, but with the help of the Mahrattas Rao Umaid Singh liberated it in 1748. As a result Bundi came under Mahratta influence. In the 19^th century Rajasthan came under British influence, and Bundi shared this experience.

Development

No definite dates are available regarding the origin of the Bundi style, but in the middle of the 18^thcentury facts about its historical background were known!' On the basis of available material, two paintings concerning the Rag-Mala theme acquire significant historical value. In the beginning of the 17^th century this style, a sub-branch of the Mewar school influenced by the Mughal style and endowed with original qualities, flourished under the patronage of art-loving kings.

Rao Chhattarsal constructed a Rang Mahal which was decorated withfrescoes. From the text Lalit-Lallam could be easily gathered facts about deeds of chivalry, art criticism and patronage of art of Bhav Singh.

Many paintings of Rag-Ragini, Nayika-Bhed, Krishna-Lila in his time now adorn private collections and museums. Traditions of drawings on the basis of Ras Raj were initiated in this period. Towards the end of this age, Lal Kavi compiled a decorative text for Rao Budha Singh (1695-1731) which praised his sharp intellect and criticism of art.

In the first part of the 18th century the Bundi style flourished. This age, from the point of the abundance of paintings and distinct characteristics, is a landmark in the development of Rajput painting. The simplicity of early Bundi paintings and the impact of Mewar started blooming into their true forms in this period. The Bundi style, based upon traditional poetry and endowed with rich colours and attractive forms, and physical structures reached its zenith.

In the middle of the 18th century the style took a new turn in the period of Raja Umaid Singh (1748-1771), in which the manifold diversities of nature and the physical beauty of nayak-nayilca, the firmness of brush and charm of conception are easily visible. Even though this style was greatly influenced by the Mughal style, it had its own independent attraction. The collection in the Prince of Wales Museum and the incomplete set of Rasikpriya in the National Museum belong to this period.

Poetry and art made further advance in the following years. Rao Raja Vishnu Singh (1773-1821) was, like his father, a great connoisseur of art. Thousands of verses based upon shringar and Bhakti he compiled himself are still available in manuscript. He painted many texts on the basis of the traditional shringar style. At the beginning of the 19th century the whole country came under the influence of the Company style the British introduced.

Bundi failed to counter this new cultural force. Raja Ram Singh (1821-1889) of Bundi was a keen lover of art. He commissioned many pictures and patronised artists on a large scale. Paintings of this period however exhibit the impact of the West. Because of this influence the Bundi style, like other styles of Rajasthani painting, began to deteriorate. From the time of Raja Ram Singh light colours, a narrow range of sentiment, lack of imagination and poor drawing began to appear. In the second half of the 19th century the famous Bundi style of painting lapsed into oblivion.

Salient Features

In the early Bundi style the shape of the limbs of nayak-nayika and the arrangement of colours resemble those of the Mewar school. Paintings of the 17th century were greatly influenced by the southern style in representing female faces, foliage of trees, starry skies.

In the Bundi style tall human figures with slim and graceful bodies are striking qualities. Women have deep red lips, small noses, round faces and small chins. Their small necks decorated with ornaments, embossed breasts tightly held up in brassieres, thin waists and felicity of expression are special characteristics of this style. Male figures wearing their turbans inclined downward, torsos covered with a long gown, dupatta round the waist and tight pyjama falling to the feet characterize the Bundi style. Men of fair complexion adorned with ornaments are easily noticeable.

Another special feature of the style is the application of seven colours in drawings of nature. These paintings show blue skies partly covered with clouds, peacocks, squirrels, parrots, heron, deer, monkeys, elephants, lions, bushy gardens and forests with a variety of flowers and trees laden with fruits, ponds covered with creepers, lotus blooms in which geese, vakul and fish are seen sporting. In short, the beauty of nature in all its diversity, vastness and colour is present in the Bundi style, and is not visible elsewhere except in the Kishangarh style.

The third highlight of the Bundi style is its drawing of architecture. Dome-shaped Rajasthani cenotaphs point skyward.

Subject

Ragragini, nayika-bhed, ritu-varnan, Barah-masa, Krishna-Lila, royal court, festivals, wars are the principal themes of the Bundi style. Because of the predominance of the Vallabha sect pictures of Krishna-Lila were mainly painted. They included Rasikpriya, Bihari Satsai, Ras Raj and other verses. Some of these texts had flowed from the brushes of artists who had not chosen any poetic texts but were based on their own poetry.

Kota Style

The Kota style came into the limelight in 1952 when Col. T.G. Gear Anderson presented his personal collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum and some of the paintings were in styles different from the Bundi style. For this reason the type of painting which flourished in Kota is termed the Kota style, which may also be considered a sub-branch of the Bundi style. But because of its originality and high artistic quality its separate identity should be recognised.

Development

Favourably impressed by Mad ho Singh Hada, son of Rao Ratan Singh of Bundi state, Emperor Shahjahan gifted him a few territories as a token of esteem. As a result an independent state of Kota came into being in 1631. But on the basis of available facts its establishment is considered more likely by the end of the 17^th century."

It is difficult to distinguish between the earlier paintings and those in the Bundi style. Credit for creating an independent Kota style goes to Raja Ram Singh (1696-1705). Many paintings of his period are available even today." They reveal that the impact of the Bundi style on the Kota style was considerable.

After Raja Ram Singh, Maharawal Bhim Singh (1703-1720) paid special regard to the Krishna-Bhakti tradition. He surrendered his palace and capital to Lord Krishna after having built a temple and changed his name to Krishan Dass and Kota's name to Nand Gram and Barsana of Shergarh.

Thus he made Kota Braj Bhoomi, and this new move greatly influenced the artistic world of Rajasthan. Paintings of his time depicting Krishna-Charitra are fairly easy to obtain. After Maharawal Bhim Singh, Arjun Singh (1720-1764) also preserved the traditional painting of Krishna-Charitra. Many paintings belonging to this time are available in the State Museum, Kota. A pictorial Bhagwad text compiled in 1760 is presumed to be in the Mewar style, but many scholars believe it belongs to the Kota-Bundi style pictorial texts. This text comprises 1190 pages and hundreds of small and big paintings.

For a new landmark in the Kota style of painting credit goes to art-loving Raja Umaid Singh (1771-1820). He also had a strong inclination for hunting. The dense forests of Kota abounded with many wild animals like lion, tiger, cheetah, pig, and deer. In the reign of Umaid Singh artists took a keen interest in depicting hunting themes, and the Kota style acquired a great reputation for painting such scenes.

In the darbar hall of the palace many frescoes are based on the Krishna-Lila epic,

Hadot-i-School and among hundreds of miniatures in the Great Palace many relate to Krishna-Charitra. Two pictorial texts belonging to the beginning of the 19th century depict the significance of the Pushti sect. One of them a text of entitled Valla-bhotsava-Chandrika decorated with beautiful pictures relating to Vallabhacharya and his seven sons, seven attributes, and various festivals in 12 months had been created." The other, Gita Panchmel, is a similar artistic text of six paintings concerning Radha-Krishna and their attributes. This tradition of the Kota style continued to be popular in the reign of Raja Ram Singh II (1822-1866), but the British influence heralded its downfall like that of others.

Salient Features

The Kota style has some characteristics-of-the Bundi style, but its own distinct features. Because of the influence of the Vallabha sect, male and female links are like those of go swamis and priests Stout bodies, shining faces, bulging eyes are special features of the Kota style. Application of green, red and golden colours in Kota style painting is very pleasing to see. Animals painted in this style include deer, tiger, lion and pig.

The style of painting relating to the Hadoti School belonged to Jhalawar and other important feudal states besides the Kota and Bundi styles. Ancient cave paintings have also been found in this region, and paintings in the Bundi style are found in art museums all over the world. Probably Bundi has earned the distinction of having produced the largest number of paintings in Rajasthan.

Writer - Jay Singh Neeraj

Painting of the Babur Nama

June 17, 2013, 2:12 am

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Humayun driven out of Delhi by the Afghan Sher Shah Sun i in 1540, spent fifteen years  in exile in Persia and Afghanistan. Shah Tahmasp of Persia gave him shelter and also promised military aid for recovery of his kingdom. During his exile Humayun spent some months at Tabriz and Kazwin. At the court of Shah Tahmasp at Tabriz he saw the paintings of the Persian artists Aga Mirak, Sultan Muhammad and Muzaffar Ali, pupils of the famous Bihzad. Later he met the painter Mir "Sayyid Ali, the illustrator of Nizami's Khamsdh. Thus he acquired taste for paintings and became a connoisseur of art. At his request Mir Sayyid Ali Tabrizi and Abdus Samad Shirazi joined him at Kabul in 1549. Abdus Samad was also a calligrapher. They gave lessons in painting to Humayun and his son Akbar. When Humayun regained his throne, both the artists accompanied him to India.

The birth of Mughal painting in India is due to the patronage of Akbar (1556-1605). He collected architects, painters and calligraphers at his new city of Fatehpur-Silcri. More than a hundred painters, both Hindus and Moslems, mostly from Kashmir, Punjab, Gwalior, Rajasthan and Gujarat worked under the Persian master artists, Abdus Samad and Mir Sayyid Ali. Inspired by Akbar, a cultural synthesis was promoted and the result was a new school of painting which is Indian in spirit and Persian in technique. Baber himself was a Barlas Turk and not a Mongol., However, his dynasty acquired the name of Mughal, and the paintings of the new school are called Mughal Painting. The term 'miniatures of the Baburid period' suggested by Hamid Suleiman is cumbrous, and is no improvement on the accepted term, which by common usage is now accepted by all scholars.

Akbar was very fond of the adventures of Harnza. Mir Hamza was the uncle of the Pro-phet, and his adventures are narrated in the book named after him. Mir Sayyid Ali painted anecdotes from the Hamzd Namd. These are large size paintings on cloth, in Persian Safavi style. Brilliant red, blue and green colours predominate in these paintings and blossoming plums and peaches and amber foliage of planes remind us of Persia.

It seems that stimulus for painting was provided by the illiteracy of Akbar. As he was unable to read, he felt the need of paintings as a visual aid. He was a broad-minded monarch who respected all religions. Anecdotes from the Hindu classics, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata which were venerated by his Hindu subjects were painted by his artists. He was proud of his ancestry and wanted to visualize the exploits of his ancestors Timur and Babur as well as his own victories and achievements. This led to the painting projects like the Timur Nama, the Babur Nama and the Akbar Nama, all based on Persian texts.

An illustrated manuscript copy of the Akbar Nama is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It was prepared for the library of Akbar. It bears the signatures of Jahangir, and a seal of Aurangzeb. During the decline of the Mughal Empire the books in the royal library got dispersed, and the Akbar Nama fell into the hands of one Ahmad Ali Khan in 1793. It was purchased by Major General John Clark, the Commissioner of Oudh in 1896. It was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum from his widow. This manuscript contains 274 folios and 117 paintings. It was illustrated by fifty six artists whose names arranged alphabetically are given below:

Anant, Asi brother of Miskina, Babu Naqqash, Bandi, Banwali Kalan, Banwali Khurd, Basawan, Bhawani, Bhawani Kalan, Bhagwan, Bhura, Chitr Muni, Durga, Dharm Das, Dhanwan, Farrukh Beg, Husain Naqqa'sh, Ikhlas, Ibrahim Kahar, Jagan, Jagjiwan, Kaheman Sangtrash, Khem Karan, Kesu, Kesu Kalan, Kesu Khurd, Kanha, La!, Madhu Kalan, Mukund, Miskin, Mahesh, Madhu Khurd, Mansur, MO Muhammad, Manohar, Narayan, Nand or Nandi, son of Ram Das, Naman, Narsingh, Nanha, Nand Gwaliori, Paras, Param jeo Gujrati, Qutub Chela, Ram Das, Sanwala, Sarwan, Stir DAs, Shankar, Tulsi, Tulsi Kalan, Tiriya and Tara.

According to Ahmad Nabi Khan, who studied the Akbar Nama, it was a co-operative work, in which the work of drawing the outline was executed by distinguished artists, while portraiture was entrusted to some, and colouring to minor ones. Among the leading artists who drew the outlines are Basawan, Jagan, Kesu Kalan, Lal, Miskin, Tulsi Kalan, and a few others.

There are four illustrated manuscripts of the Baur Nama which are worthy of notice. Of these one is preserved in the British Museum (Or. 3714). It was gifted to the museum by G. G. Barnard on June 1, 1889. It has 529 folios out of which 118 are painted. This is the work of forty one artists. This illustrated manuscript has been recently studied by Hamid Suleiman and published by the Academy of Science of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In this book 92 illustrations have been reproduced in colour. In this Babur Nama garden scene are excellent. The names of artists are as below:

Abdullah, Banwari Khurd, Banwari Kalan, Bhura, Bhawani, Dhannu, Dev Gujarati, Dhan Raj, Farrukh, Gobind, Jamshed, Jagnath, Khusro Quli, Khizr Khela, Ibrahim Kahar, Ibrahim Naqash, Khem, Kesu Gujarati, Mansur, Manohar, Mukesh, Mukhlas, Nand Gwaliori, Nama, Padarath, Prem Gujarati, Ram Das, Rasika, Ras, Shankar Gujrati, Shiv DAs, Sanwala, Sarwan, Shyam, Surjan, Stir Ds, Sur Gujarati, Triya, Talok, Tulsi Khurd and Tharial.

There is another illustrated manuscript of the Babur Nama in the State Museum of Eastern Cultures, Moscow, which has been studied by Tulayev, who reproduced 22 paintings from it in monochrome. It has 69 miniature paintings on 57 folios. It was originally presented to the Russian Ambassador Prince Dolgorukov by the mother of Nasaruddin, Shah of Persia. Stchoukine, the Russian collector of Oriental art received it as a gift from one Alexei Morozov. The Stchoukine collection ultimately came to the State Museum of Eastern Culture, Moscow. Its folios do not have the names of any artists. Its paintings, however, do not resemble those of the British Museum or the National Museum, Babur Nama. They are, however, of good quality and worthy of reproduction in colour.

The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has 18 paintings of the Babur Nama. Out of these two show plants, birds and animals, seven battle scenes, and twelve various anecdotes like feasts and harem scenes, and one an ashram of Sadhus. Their style is different from that of other Babur Natneis, and Babur is depicted wearing a plumed helmet. A battle scene bears the names of artists Lal and Durga (tareih Lãl, amal Durga) and another of Mukand and Kheman (tiara Mukand, amal Kheman Sangtreish). A painting showing a camel and elephant fight bears the name of Chela, and another showing presentation of tribute has the name Yakub Kashmiri niimi Lal inscribed on it. The quality of paintings is poor as compared with the other Baur Nameis.

The Babur Nama of the National Museum (N. M. 50.326), New Delhi, which is the subject of this monograph has 378 folios. Out of these 122 folios are illustrated with 144 illustrations. Forty two illustrations depict flora and fauna, twenty seven historial episodes, twenty seven personal life of Babur, twenty five battle scenes, twelve domestic life, seven hunting scenes, and three show feasts. It was acquired by the National Museum from Agra College, Agra. The illustrated folios bear the names of forty nine artists, neatly written by the calligrapher. These are given below in alphabetical order:

Allah Quli, Anant, Asi, Asi Kahar, Bandi, Banwari Khurd, Bhag, Bhagwan, Bhawani, Bhura, Daulat, Dhannu, Dhan Raj, Dhaxm Das, Farrukh Chela, Fattu, Gobind, Husain Cheld, Ibrahim, Ibrahim Kahar, Jagnath, Jamal, Jamshed, Kesu Kahar, Khem, Khem Karan, Khizra, Lachhman, Lohka, Madho, Mahesh, Makra, Mansur, Miskin, Mohammad Kashmiri, Mohammad Pandit, Naman, Nand Gwaliori, Naqi, Narsi, Narsingh, Prem, Prem Gujrati, Sarwan, Shankar, Shiv Das, Sur Das, Timur (Ustad) and Tulsi.

Of these artists Mansur was the same who later on painted birds and animals for Jahangir. Daulat was an artist of high merit. The same may be said of Sur Das, Bhura, Jagnath, Dharm Das, Asi, Nand Gwaliori and Makra.

A comparison of the names of artists of the National Museum Babur Nama, British Museum Babur Nama, and Akbar Nama of the Victoria and Albert Museum reveals interesting facts. The Akbar Mimi' was painted by fifty three artists and the National Museum Babur Nama by forty nine artists. The following twenty artists are common to both these illustrated manuscripts.

Anant, As!, Band!, Banwari Khurd, Bliagwan, Bhawani, BhUra, Dharam DAs, Ibrahim Kahar, Madhti, Mahesh, Mansur, Miskin, Nama, Nand Gwaliori, Narsingh, Param Jeo Gujrati, Sarwan, Shankar, Sur Das and Tulsi.

The following twenty artists are common to the Babur Namas of the British Museum and the National Museum, New Delhi.

Banwari Khurd, Shard, Bhawani, Dhan Raj, Farrukh Beg, Gobind, Ibrahim Kahar, Jagnath, Jamshed Chela, Khem, Khizr Chela, Mahesh, Mansur, Nand Gwaliori, Nama, Shankar, Shiv Das, Sarwan, Stir and Tulsi.

The following ten artists are common to the Victoria and Albert Akbar Noma and the National Museum Baur Namd, viz. Asi, Banwari Khurd, Bhawani, Ibrahim Kahar, Mahesh, Mansur, Nama, Nand Gwaliori, Sur Das, and Tulsi.

There is no doubt that Victoria and Albert Akbar Nama- belongs to the royal library of Akbar. The presence of the signatures of Jahangir and seal of Aurangzeb on the binding confirm it. The analysis which I have given above also leads to the conclusion that the British Museum Babur Mind and the National Museum Babur Nama also came from the same source. The high quality of paintings of both these manuscripts further lends support to this conclusion. The same, however, cannot be said of Moscow and Victoria and Albert manuscripts. They were painted by different artists.

Rai Krishnadasa was the first scholar who studied the National Museum's Babur Mind in 1955, and also reproduced two paintings in colours in his Mughal Miniatures. Commenting on the Baur Noma he wrote as follows:

"The copy from which the two illustrations are reproduced is in the National Museum, New Delhi, and is the fifth important copy of the Babar Nama known to students of Mughal painting. This copy belonged to the Imperial Library as is attested by the signature of Shah khan and the names of the royal artists inscribed on the paintings. It is well known that Shah Jahan was in the habit of signing manuscripts in the Imperial Library. The date of the MSS can fortunately be ascertained. Folio 116 illustrating the twenty-fourth picture by Khem bears an inscription which states it was painted in the 42nd regnal year of Akbar, i.e. 1598 A.D."

Basil Gray was the next scholar who noticed this Babur Nama. He observed as follows: "Two other copies of the Babur Nama have survived from approximately this period. One, now in the National Museum of India, but formerly in Agra College is actually dated on one miniature 1597."

Careful examination of folio 116, a painting by Khem, shows the date, which has been partially mutilated in the process of binding. It is Ilahi '42', which is Akbar's era and gives an A.D. equivalent of 1598.

The illustrated Babur Namas are based on Persian translation of the Baur Nãmã in Turki. The translation in Persian was finished by Khan Khanan Abdul Rahim in 1589. It seems all these Babur Namas were illustrated between 1595 and 1605 during the life-time of Akbar.

A remarkable character of the Babur Nama paintings of the four series is their originality. As Barrett and Gray remark, 'there is little repetition in these several series and so much invention.'

The portraiture of the face of Wilbur is uniform throughout the series. It is likely that it is the work of one artist. It is possibly based on a portrait of Babur, which must have been painted during his life-time. He has the eyes of a dreamer, an aquiline nose and a pointed beard. The poet and man of action, Babur, are well portrayed.

Faces of men and women are usually shown three quarter or in profile.

Even when the artists are painting scenes from Farghana and Kabul, they depict the architecture of India. In the landscapes on the top of some paintings, palms and plantains of India are painted. Among the birds in these landscapes are moon-partridges and peacocks, which are admired by the poets of India. In the foreground of some of the paintings of birds and plants, lotuses with their leaves topsy-turvy and ducks playing among them are painted (Folio 277). These symbols of love acquired a poetic significance as in due course the Mughal painting evolved into Kangra style.

The treatment of mountains is characteristic of Mughal painting of the Akbar period. It is a direct borrowing from Persian painting. Rocks piled upon each other are more seen in arid Persia than in India.

The Babur Nama is also an illustrated social history of India. Soldiers and horses were clad in armour. Battles were fought with swords, bows and arrows. Drums were lustily beaten to infuse courage among the soldiers. We also see the first use of artillery. Rivers were crossed on bridges of boats and rafts. Camels and bullocks were commonly used for transport of goods. The dress of nobles was elaborate. In this Babur Nama we see the first record of a wooden Persian wheel with terracotta buckets (Folio 121) and of a hand-mill (Folio 70). The rulers were approached with respect and many paintings give us a glimpse of court etiquette and ceremonial. Some of the paintings are very expressive. We perceive adulation on the faces of the courtiers and determination and courage on the faces of soldiers. The figures are shown in movement, and their highly expressive gestures convey their feelings.

The section of the Babur Nama which deals with India is the first illustrated Natural History of India. Babur came from Central Asia and Afghanistan, which do not have that variety in fauna and flora as India. A keen observer and lover of nature who delighted in plants and gardens, he was amazed by what he saw in India. He is the first person to record the birds, beasts and plants of India. His description of plants, birds and animals are brief but pertinent. He could distinguish the different varieties of oranges in India. He saw the wild plantains, which can be seen even now near Mandu. Among the birds he noted peacocks, monal pheasants, herons, hoopoes, green pigeons, parrots, ducks, pelicans and storks of many varieties. Among the animals he mentions antelopes, thars, onagers, black buck, wolves, foxes, rhinoceros and nilgais. He noticed the affinity between the squirrel and mouse, which are both rodents. He also noticed the kinship between the rhinoceros and the horse, which are Peris-sodactyls. However, he mistook the flying fox as a bird. Considering the age in which he lived, he can rightly claim to be the first natural history scientist of India. His genes for love of plants and animals were inherited by his great grandson Jahangir, who was also a keen observer. Jahangir's favourite artist was Mansur, some of whose early paintings are seen in this Babur Nama.

Writer – M.S. Randawa