Asian and African studies blog

An Indian album in Asian and African Collections of which hitherto little notice has been taken is a large but slim volume, numbered Add.21475 (Blumhardt 1899, no. 91).  The album contains eight paintings mostly from the Deccan, including five large paintings illustrating verses from Keshav Das’s classic text on poetics, the Rasikapriya.  It has to my knowledge been exhibited only once, in 1976, and only one of its paintings has ever been published, a portrait of Raja Sambhaji (Losty 1986, no. 56).  An inscription records that it was presented to the British Museum in 1856 by F.S. Haden Esq.  This is possibly Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), an eminent surgeon and one of the great 19^th century authorities on etching, both on its practice and on the works of eminent etchers.  The album was rebound in Europe and the paintings remounted on European paper so that any connection with its compiler in India has been lost.

The album begins with two important Maratha portraits.

 
Inscribed above: Maharaja Sambhajiraje.  Maratha, late 17^th century.  Opaque pigments and gold on paper, 146 by 220mm (including border).  BL Add.21475, f. 1

Sambhaji (1657-89) was the eldest son of Sivaji, leader of the Hindu Deccani resistance to Aurangzeb’s assault on the kingdoms of the Deccan.  After Sivaji’s death in 1680, Sambhaji led his forces against not only the Mughals but the Siddis of Janjira, the Portuguese in Goa and the Wodeyars of Mysore.  He was captured in a minor skirmish with the Mughals at Sangameshwar in 1689 and executed at Aurangzeb’s command.  This rare portrait cannot be much removed in time from Sambhaji’s life.  The conventions of the portraiture, being seated on a terrace holding a flower, are standard throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries, but the tangled clouds at the top point particularly to an early date.  Its dark flat colours suggest a provenance far from the glitter of Hyderabad, the centre of Deccani painting at the time, and perhaps to a Maratha provenance, about whose artistic activities at this period little is known.  Portraits of Sambhaji are very rare, but two formerly in the royal Satara collection are now in the History Museum of Marathwada University, Aurangabad (Deshmukh 1992, pls. I. IIIA).  The former is a standard Golconda/Hyderabad sort of portrait, but the second showing him seated with his young son Sahu (pl. IIIA), painted probably in the early 18^th century by a Maratha artist, seems based on our portrait or one similarly early.  Both show the same Vaisnava sect mark on his forehead and the four chains of pearls attached to the back of his turban. 

 
The Maratha Peshwa, Madhavrao II.  Maratha, perhaps by Shivram Chitari, c. 1790.  Opaque pigments and gold on paper, 278 by 205 mm (including border).  BL Add.21475, f. 2.

Next in the album comes an unattributed portrait which from the turban and clothing can only be one of the later Maratha Peshwas.  The Peshwas, all Chitpavan Brahmins, were the hereditary chief ministers of the Maratha kings, and after the descendants of Sivaji and Sambhaji had established themselves at Satara and Kolhapur, they ruled the empire in their name from their base at Pune.  The long shawl wound round the body is in the manner of the Bijapur and Golconda sultans of the 17^th century.  The hairless face, long nose, protruding mouth, turban, clothing and Vaisnava sect mark all match those of the young Peshwa Madhavrao II Narayan (1774-1795), the posthumous son of the murdered Peshwa Madhavrao I, as seen for example in the portrait by James Wales dated 1792 in the collections of the Royal Asiatic Society (see the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings). 

The Maratha empire was governed by the famous statesman Nana Phadnavis during the Peshwa’s long minority.  Holly Shaffer who is currently researching Maratha paintings has kindly confirmed the identity of the sitter as the Peshwa Madhavrao II, based on an unpublished inscribed portrait of the same man in the Bharat Itihas Samshodak Mandal in Pune.  A portrait of his father, Madhavrao I with various attendants, ascribed to the Maratha artist Shivram Chitari, now in Aurangabad, is in a very similar style (Deshmukh 1992, pl. IX).  That portrait has a garden and palace background that suggests that the artist must have had some training in Hyderabad, which was the major artistic centre for the northern Deccan.  For painting in Hyderabad and its provinces in the later 18^th century, see Zebrowski 1983, pp. 244-82.

These two portraits of Maratha interest are succeeded somewhat unexpectedly by a Jaipur painting of Radha and Krishna, portrayed as the hero and heroine of the month of Jyestha (May/June) from a Barahmasa set of paintings illustrating the twelve months of the Hindu calendar.

 
The month of Jyestha (May/June), from a Barahmasa set.  Jaipur, c. 1780-90.  Opaque pigments and gold, 244 by 189 mm (including border).  BL Add.21475, f. 3.

Krishna dressed as a young raja is embracing Radha, while being serenaded by two female musicians with tambura and drum.  Radha’s maid to the side holds the cord of a punkah hanging from the ceiling of the pavilion and Krishna with his hennaed hand held out seems to be encouraging her to work harder, to cool them down in the hottest month of the year.  Our artist’s attention to detail is exquisite – note particularly his foreground flowers and those round the balustrade, as well as the pairs of brilliantly coloured birds in the trees.  In a contemporary Barahmasa set of paintings from Jaipur in the History Museum, Aurangabad (fully published in Deshmukh n.d.), the month of Jyestha is a very similar composition to our painting (ibid., pl. 5), save that in place of the woodland surround there is a view of a distant landscape with tiny buildings and trees.  Krishna’s costume and appearance both in our painting and in the Aurangabad set leave little doubt that he is based on the portraits of the young Maharaja of Jaipur, Pratap Singh, as seen in a drawing in the BL when he is slightly older.

 
Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jaipur (b. 1764, reg. 1778-1803).  Attributed to Sahib Ram, 1785-90.  Brush drawing with some colour on paper, 610 by 440 mm.  BL Add.Or.5579

Another drawing formerly in the James Ivory collection shows Pratap Singh at a younger age without facial hair (Losty 2010, no. 46) and is even closer in appearance.  The enhanced curve of the eyebrow and the curl of hair at the back of the neck are similar in all these examples.  Shailka Misra, who is currently researching the Jaipur archives, advises that in a Ragamala set from Pratap Singh's reign, in the City Palace Museum, Pratap Singh also appears as the hero or nayaka of one of the Ragamala illustrations.  Jaipur paintings of this date are normally surrounded by broad red borders, but instead here there is a Mughal type of border of alternate large and small blue cartouches filled with arabesques against a yellow ground, suggesting influence from a late Mughal source.  Pratap Singh’s Ragamala in Jaipur also has the same kind of Mughal-influenced borders.

The angled hipped roof of the pavilion, normally seen in Avadhi paintings, and the attention paid to linear perspective suggest that our artist has been exposed to influence from Lucknow.  The connections between Avadhi and later Jaipur paintings are obvious but their means of transmission remain to be explored.  The Barahmasa set in Aurangabad also has similar angled hipped roofs as well as two other readily identifiable Avadhi characteristics:  distant tiny landscapes in the manner of the Faizabad and Lucknow artist Mihr Chand and a concern to show foreshortened buildings in linear perspective.

Given that the other paintings in the album are all associated with the Deccan, it would seem that this Jaipur painting would also have been collected there.  The many Jaipur religious and mythological paintings in the collection of Major Edward Moor, author of the Hindu Pantheon (London 1810), now in the British Museum, indicate that such paintings were readily available in Bombay and Poona where Moor served in the Bombay Army 1796-1805.  Jaipur seems to have been a centre for the dissemination of Hindu religious and genre paintings during this period, quite apart from the ones which were sent as gifts to other courts.  Our painting could easily have been part of a Barahmasa set sent as a gift to one of the Peshwas, perhaps Madhavrao II Narayan himself, and mounted up with other Maratha and Deccani material in this album. The Jaipur Barahmasa set now in Aurangabad came from the royal Satara collection and was possibly a gift from Pratap Singh to Maharaja Shahu II (reg. 1777-1810).

The remaining five paintings in the album are all from a large Hyderabad-influenced series of the Rasikapriya, the classic text by Keshav Das on Hindi poetics, and will be dealt with in a subsequent post.

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts (Emeritus)

Further reading:

Blumhardt, J.F., Catalogue of the Hindi, Punjabi and Hindustani Manuscripts in the British Museum, London, 1899

Deshmukh, S.B., Maratha Painting (Part 1), Marathwada University, Aurangabad, 1992

Deshmukh, S.B., Baramasa Paintings, Marathwada University, Aurangabad, n.d. [1992?]

Losty, J.P., Indian Book Painting, British Library, London, 1986

Losty, J.P., Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London, 2010

Zebrowski, M., Deccani Painting, Sotheby Publications, University of California Press, London and Los Angeles, 1983

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Rare portrait of Ikhlas Khan, the African Prime Minister of Bijapur, acquired by the British Library

Regular followers of this blog will know through the Mewar Ramayana Digitally Reunited blog post that recently we were delighted to join with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay (CSMVS Musuem), Mumbai, in announcing the launch of the digitised Mewar Ramayana manuscript. The Ramayana is one of the great epic stories of the world, with a unique universal human appeal. This particular manuscript, commissioned by Maharana Jagat Singh of Mewar in the mid-17th century, is widely regarded as one of the finest, most lavishly-illustrated copies of the epic ever made.

As our first major collaborative project with partners in India, the launch of the digitised Mewar Ramayana marks a significant early milestone in our aim to make parts of our extensive collections relating to South Asia freely available online, for people all around the world to study, admire and enjoy.

It was both to celebrate the launch with CSMVS at a reception on 21 March, and to discuss future collaborations with CSMVS and other partners in India, that a small BL contingent set off for Mumbai: Baroness Tessa Blackstone (Chairman of the Board), Roly Keating (Chief Executive), Marina Chellini (project curator), Jerry Losty (project consultant, see Curator’s perspective: accessing the Mewar Ramayana), Kate Losty (a conservator by training, and as Jerry’s wife, as engaged with the Mewar Ramayana as he), and myself.

CSMVS, Mumbai

Our CSMVS colleagues and friends, in particular Sabyasachi Mukherjee (Director General), Vandana Prapanna (project curator), Roda Ahluwalia (project consultant), Manisha Nene (curator), and Koumudi Malladi (coordinator, DG’s office), had ensured a memorable evening’s programme for the launch! It began with refreshments for some 120 guests under the watchful eye of Jamsetji Tata, whose bust graced the lobby of Coomaraswamy Hall. This felt particularly apt, since it was partly due to the generous support of the Jamsetji Tata Trust that the project could happen.

The statue of Jamsetji Tata fittingly presides over the launch.

Brief speeches by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Baroness Blackstone, Kumar Iyer (British Deputy High Commissioner) and Roly Keating focussed on the deep historical ties between India and the UK, and the importance of international collaboration in building on these to ensure greater access to cultural treasures. These sentiments were beautifully encapsulated by honoured guest Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar, the Maharana of Udaipur, whose ancestor Rana Bhim Singh first donated the part of the manuscript now held at the British Library to Lt. Col. James Tod, British Political Agent and noted historian, in the early 19th century. Speculating as to his ancestor’s motivations in presenting the folios to Tod, Shriji concluded that the gift was symptomatic of the strong, cultural link between India and Britain, a link further strengthened by the ‘conduit of shared values’ demonstrated by the CSMVS-BL collaboration.

Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar, the Maharana of Udiapur, addresses a packed Coomaraswamy Hall

The digital Mewar Ramayana was unveiled by Marina Chellini, who talked the audience through the special features of the resource, in the shaping and creating of which she had played such a leading role, whilst Vandana Prapanna provided fascinating insights into the project from the perspective of CSMVS. In the focal point of the evening, art historians Jerry Losty and Roda Ahluwalia delivered illustrated lectures, Jerry Losty concentrating on the immense artistic importance of the Mewar Ramayana, and Roda Ahluwalia exploring its significance in relation to other Ramayanas and to the Rajput manuscript tradition.

A lamp-lighting ceremony to inaugurate The Balakanda of the Mewar Ramayana in the Curator’s Gallery followed. Not to be missed by those fortunate enough to be in Mumbai, this exhibition displays original folios from the manuscript held at CSMVS, cleverly juxtaposing them with an animated digital folio projected on the wall, and the reunited digital resource on a kiosk to one side. Celebrations were brought to a close with a dinner at Bombay Gymkhana, very generously hosted by the Chairman and Director General of CSMVS.

BL Chairman of the Board, Baroness Tessa Blackstone, at the lamp-lighting ceremony

After meetings with Sabyasachi Mukherjee the following morning to discuss exciting plans for the next CSMVS-BL joint endeavour and tours of the museum and conservation studio, the BL contingent went their separate ways. For Baroness Blackstone, Roly Keating and me, ‘work’ had just begun, with a further four days of meetings scheduled with partners in Mumbai and Kolkata. But that’s for another post.

BL Chief Executive Roly Keating and Baroness Tessa Blackstone visiting the CMSVS conservation studio

In the meantime, our sincere thanks go to CSMVS, who in the course of this project have become friends as well as international colleagues. We look forward to many similar successes in the future!

We would also like to thank our funders, the Jamsetji Tata Trust, Sir Gulam Noon, the World Collections Programme, the Friends of the British Library and the British Library Board, without whom the project could not have been achieved.

And finally, we hope that you, our readers - whether via pc, tablet or phone, on the move or in the comfort of your own homes - will continue to study and enjoy this unique resource! You can explore the manuscript by going to www.bl.uk/ramayana or http://csmvs.in/the-mewar-ramayana.html.

Leena Mitford

Lead Curator, South Asian Studies

The digital version of the complete Valmiki Ramayana prepared for  Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar in 1649-53 was launched on 21 March at the CSMVS, Mumbai, making freely available to the world one of the greatest achievements of Indian art.  For the complete digital version of the manuscript together with descriptions of the paintings and essays on its various aspects, see www.bl.uk/ramayana.  My own involvement with the manuscript goes back to 1971 when as a young Sanskritist straight from Oxford I first joined the British Museum, before the collections were transferred to the British Library in 1973.  I spent a lot of time exploring the oriental select manuscripts lobby, pulling the manuscripts off the shelf one by one for a brief examination.  The bound manuscripts were kept in so far as possible in strict numerical sequence in the main runs of Additional and Oriental manuscripts, so that Arabic, Persian, Hebrew or Sanskrit manuscripts could be found side by side, encouraging a serendipitous tendency to explore other cultures.  I was vaguely aware of the great Mughal manuscripts in the collections, the subject of British Library exhibitions in 1982 and 2012, but was there I wondered anything comparable from the Hindu world? 

Covers and doublure of a volume of the Ramayana as bound in the British Museum bindery in 1844.  British Library, Add.15295.

I soon found three massive bound volumes which announced themselves on the spines as five volumes of the Ramayana, books 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7.  On hauling them off the shelf and opening them I found them crammed with paintings.  Each of the volumes had had all its folios, the unillustrated ones as well as the full page paintings, let into heavy guard papers which were then bound up in these elaborate bindings.  The folios being in landscape format, the volumes had to be turned on their sides to be read.  On further investigation, one of the volumes, the Bala Kanda or first book, with over 200 paintings, turned out to have been written in 1712 in Udaipur under Maharana Sangram Singh (Add.15295), but the other four books containing 286 full page paintings were prepared in Udaipur for Rana Jagat Singh between 1649 and 1652, as well as in the first year of his successor Rana Raj Singh in 1653 (Add.152396-7).  They had, I found, never been exhibited, since the volumes were too large to fit into the department’s then exhibition cases; they had never been lent to be exhibited elsewhere, not even to the great exhibition of Indian art at Burlington House in 1947, since the British Museum did not then lend at all; and I could find only one brief reference to them in the art historical literature, in Douglas Barrett and Basil Gray’s Indian Painting of 1963.  They were of course mentioned in Cecil Bendall’s Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1902), but he was concerned about the text and not the pictures:  back then in 1902 no one in the west knew anything about Indian painting, while A.K. Coomaraswamy had yet to publish his book on Rajput painting.  In 1971 when I told those of my colleagues who were interested in Persian and Indian painting about these great volumes, my excitement was greeted with some indifference: they knew of their existence of course, but Rajput painting and manuscripts did not conform to Mughal standards of painting, let alone Persian.  The volumes turned out to be illustrated in three different styles of contemporary Mewar painting, involving the artists Sahib Din and Manohar and their studios and an unknown master working in a mixed Mewar-Deccani style. 

Hanuman espies Rama and Laksmana as they approach Lake Pampa.  Ramayana, Kiskindha Kanda.  Mewar-Deccani style, Udaipur, 1653.  British Library, Add.15297(1), f.2r.

Since that to me momentous discovery in 1971, I have been occupied with trying to publish these volumes and to place them within their artistic and cultural contexts.  I had found only four volumes of Jagat Singh’s Ramayana – where were the other three?  I soon found some of the original Bala Kanda of 1649 ascribed to the artist Manohar in the then Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay, and most of the rest of the paintings in the book in a private collection in that city.  But when Dr Moti Chanda published some of its paintings in 1955, he was unaware of the four London volumes.  It emerged that one volume, book 3, the Aranya Kanda or Forest book, was still in Udaipur.  It had been transferred along with the rest of the royal Mewar library to the Udaipur branch of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, and was subsequently moved to that institute’s headquarters in Jodhpur.  In 1982 the four London volumes formed some of the highlights of my exhibition The Art of the Book in India in the British Library.  

Hanuman is brought bound before Ravana and his tail set on fire.  Ramayana, Sundara Kanda.  Mewar-Deccani style, Udaipur, c. 1650.  British Library, IO San 3621, f.9r.

While I was preparing that exhibition Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, who had been working on a catalogue of the Indian miniatures in the then separate India Office Library, brought to my attention a volume of 18 paintings of a Sundara Kanda that had been acquired in 1912.  This it seems was what remained of the final volume to be unearthed and I included it in my exhibition.  I also brought to London for the exhibition folios from the two volumes still in India, thereby uniting the entire manuscript for the first time since 1820.  Since then I have published various articles on different aspects of them and other scholars including Vidya Dehejia and Andrew Topsfield have also worked on them, but the task is immense, since we are concerned here with over 400 paintings as well as a most interesting text, which is earlier than most of the manuscripts used for the critical edition of the Ramayana prepared in Baroda in 1960-75.

Maharana Bhim Singh of Mewar (reg. 1778-1828) out hunting.  Mewar, 1810-20.  British Library, Add.Or.4662.

But how did these volumes get to London in the first place?  Maharana Bhim Singh of Mewar was the typical Rajput ruler of the time, more interested in hunting and grand festivals than in literary pursuits, but he did revive the royal painting studio.  He was on very friendly terms with Captain James Tod, the future historian of the Rajputs, who was appointed in 1818 as the East India Company’s Agent to the western Rajput states.   On Tod’s final departure from Udaipur in 1820 the Maharana presented to him four volumes of Jagat Singh’s Ramayana as well as the Bala Kanda of 1712 prepared under Sangram Singh.   Tod on his return to London in 1823 presented the five volumes to the Duke of Sussex, one of the younger sons of King George III, who had accumulated a vast and important library, and it was at the sale of the Duke’s library in 1844 that the five volumes were purchased for the British Museum.  They were still in bundles in their loose-leaf traditional format and it was then that they were bound up in their handsome bindings, the enormous Bala Kanda in one volume (Add.15295) and the remaining four books in two volumes (Add.15296 and Add.15297).

It emerged over the 40 years since 1971 that the bound volumes in London had kept the paintings in absolutely pristine condition, since up to that time scarcely anyone had looked at them, but as I and other scholars turned their pages in subsequent years it became increasingly obvious that the paintings were suffering, since the folios housed in their rigid bindings could not be turned without the paintings flexing and with that the ensuing risk of the pigments flaking.  One of my first tasks was to organise the splitting of Add.15297 since the two heavily illustrated books within, including Sahib Din’s masterpiece the Yuddha Kanda (Book 6), were most at risk. 

Hanuman disturbs the divine inhabitants of the Himalaya when fetching herbs to cure Laksmana who had been wounded by Ravana.  Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda.  By Sahib Din, Udaipur, 1652.  British Library, Add.15297(1), f.150r.

In Valmiki’s hermitage Lava and Kusa recite the story of Rama before Satrughna.  Ramayana, Uttara Kanda.  Style of Manohar, Udaipur, 1653.  British Library, Add.15297(2), f.88r.

Book 7 the Uttara Kanda was removed and a new binding matching the original was prepared for it, as well as a new spine for the Yuddha Kanda.  In 1995, some 20 folios concerned with Rama’s quest for Sita were detached and mounted separately in an exhibition at the British Library, The Mythical Quest, and were later lent to several exhibitions in the UK as well as to the Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore. 

It seemed to me many years ago that the best way to ensure the safety of the paintings was to dismantle the volumes entirely and mount the paintings separately, but this raised opposition within the Library as the volumes themselves were of great historic interest.  However my view eventually prevailed.  The volumes were dismantled and the paintings individually mounted and a large part of the London volumes were shown in a grand Ramayana exhibition in the British Library in 2008 with my accompanying book published both in London and in India.  From them on it was but a step to conceive of reuniting the whole manuscript digitally, not just the paintings but the text as well, so that scholars could work in particular on the relationship between text and painting, and also so that everyone could have access to one of the greatest monuments of Indian art.

 J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts (Emeritus)

Further Reading:

www.bl.uk/ramayana

Chandra, M., ‘Paintings from an Illustrated Version of the Ramayana Painted at Udaipur in AD 1649’ in Bulletin of the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India Bombay, vol. 5, 1955-57, pp. 33-49

Losty, J.P., The Art of the Book in India, British Library, London, 1982

Losty, J.P., The Ramayana:  Love and Valour in India’s Great Epic – the Mewar Ramayana Manuscripts, British Library, London, 2008

Topsfield, A., Court Painting at Udaipur: Art under the Patronage of the Maharanas of Mewar, Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 2002

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Mewar Ramayana Digitally Reunited

Distinctive leg-of-mutton legs and fine jewels: a new display of Indian paintings in the Treasures of the British Library

The Mewar Ramayana is one of the most beautiful manuscripts in the world and has been digitally reunited after being split between organisations in the UK and India for over 150 years. The Indian epic Ramayana is one of the world's greatest and most enduring stories, telling the stirring tale of Prince Rama who was exiled for fourteen years through the plotting of his stepmother. In exile, his wife Sita is abducted by the ten-headed demon king Ravana; with the assistance of an army of monkeys and bears, Rama searches and rescues Sita.

Sahib Din, Rama is driven into exile as Dasaratha and the queens bid farewell, c. 1650. British Library, Add.15296(1), f. 56r

Through a major partnership between the British Library and CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, hundreds of folios, including 377 vividly illustrated paintings, of the Mewar Ramayana can now be viewed online. You can see the manuscript at www.bl.uk/ramayana.

For the first time, people around the world will be able to digitally explore the pages of the Mewar Ramayana manuscript, which was commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh I of Mewar in 1649 and produced in his court studio at Udaipur. The project, which has been three years in the making, is sponsored by the Jamsetji Tata Trust, the World Collections Programme, and the Friends of the British Library.

The Ramayana – “Rama’s journey” is attributed to the sage Valmiki and was composed some two and a half thousand years ago. Through oral tradition 20,000 verses continued to circulate from generation to generation, in the various languages of India and beyond. The story embodies the Hindu idea of dharma – duty, behaving correctly according to one’s position and role in society.

The Mewar Ramayana manuscript is divided into seven books, the text prepared by a Jain scribe Mahatma Hirananda and the paintings by various artists including studio master Sahib Din. Production of the manuscript started in 1649 and was completed after Rana Jagat Singh's death in October 1652. This lavish manuscript features intricate paintings of Hindu gods and their battles and the paintings in the Mewar Ramayana are among the finest examples of Indian art.

Hanuman observes Ravana's interview with Sita, c. 1653. British Library, IO San 3621, f.3

After more than 150 years after production, four volumes from this series were presented by Jagat Singh's descendant Maharana Bhim Singh of Mewar (1778-1828) to Lt. Col. James Tod (1782-1835), the first British Political Agent to the Western Rajput Courts in the early 19th century. In 1823, following his return to Britain, Tod presented the volumes to the royal bibliophile the Duke of Sussex (1773-1843) in 1823. Following the Duke's death, the content of his library went on sale in 1844, the four volumes were purchased by the British Museum, now the British Library. The remaining volumes became dispersed over time.

The digital Mewar Ramayana will enable users to ‘turn the pages' online in the unbound style reflecting the traditional Indian loose-leaf format, and interpretive text and audio will allow the broadest possible audience to study and enjoy this text in a whole new way. It will also transform access to the manuscript for researchers, who will have the text and paintings side by side in one place for the first time. The project has been led by British Library curator Marina Chellini with assistance from Leena Mitford, J.P. Losty and Pasquale Manzo.

Technical note:

This new version of 'Turning the Pages' is built in HTML5. It is not reliant on 'plugins' you need to install first, as with previous versions. It will work with the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 9 +
Google Chrome 14+
Firefox 11+
Safari 

As it is a very large file, it may take a few minutes to download (depending on your broadband speed).

For the press release and additional images, please visit the British Library's Press and Policy page.

Regular visitors to the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library, may have encountered our recent display of Natural History drawings from India next to the entrance to the Magna Carta. From 8 March 2014, a new display of Indian paintings from the Visual Arts collection will be on view.

The British Library’s collection of Indian paintings date mainly from the 16 -19^th centuries. The works include portraits and paintings from provinces such as Lucknow, Hyderabad,  Murshidabad, the Deccan, Central India, Rajasthan, the Punjab Hills and Plains. The core collection was formed by Richard Johnson, who was in the service of the East India Company from 1770-90. Johnson’s collection was later acquired by the East India Company for its Library in 1807 and afterwards incorporated into the British Library.

In this period Mughal emperors, kings of Rajasthan and even British officers were great patrons of art, establishing workshops and commissioning countless paintings. Popular topics for artists included lavish depictions of court life, portraiture and visualisations of romantic poetry. As works of art on paper, these illustrations were intended to be viewed by the patron alone or shared with a privileged audience. Rather than being displayed on walls, the works were either bound in a muraqqa (album) or stacked as sets of folios so that the viewer had every opportunity to marvel at the intricate details.

Highlights include one of our most recent acquisitions, a portrait of Rao Arjun Singh worshipping Sri Brijnathji in a rose garden, as well as a selection of Indian paintings that have been added to the collection in the last few decades. To understand the reference to the distinctive leg-of-mutton legs, you may need to get up close to our new display of paintings!

 
Rao Arjun Singh worshipping Sri Brijnathji in a rose garden, Kotah (India), 1720-25. British Library, Add.Or.5722.

Maharana Bhim Singh of Mewar out hunting, Mewar (Rajasthan, India), c. 1800-10. British Library, Add.Or.4662.

Maharana Fateh Singh of Udaipur atop an elephant, attributed to Shivalal, Udaipur (Rajasthan, India), c. 1888-89. British Library, Add.Or.5603

The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library hosts a permanent free display of the library's greatest treasures. It is usually open 7 days a week.

Additional material held in the Visual Arts department at the British Library can be viewed by appointment in the Print Room (Asian & African Studies Reading Room). Please email [email protected] for an appointment. The Print Room is generally open Monday-Friday, from 2-5pm.

Malini Roy, Visual Arts Curator

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Recent acquisition - Rao Arjun Singh worshipping Sri Brijnathji

In 1970 the British Museum purchased a small illustrated Balinese palm leaf manuscript from a vendor, who last week – nearly 44 years later! – contacted the British Library to say “As a matter of fact the MS was missing a page, because I had given it to my then girlfriend.  Recently I saw her again, and she returned the page, which I think ought to be reunited with the whole.”  And so last Wednesday I met Clive Sinclair, renowned author (his latest book, Death & Texas will be published in London next month by Peter Halban) and in fact no stranger to the British Library, where he was Penguin Writers Fellow in 1996.  In the course of sorting out his literary archive, which has been acquired by the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Clive had rediscovered the palm leaf folio and, very generously, resolved to bring it back into the fold of its family.  


Clive Sinclair with the Balinese palm leaf (lontar) manuscript of Sutasoma Kakawin (Or.13277), together with the framed fourth folio, now reunited with its siblings.  Photo by A.T. Gallop, 15.1.2014.

Clive Sinclair had bought the manuscript, at the time described as a ‘Chinese book’, in Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California, in early 1970.  The manuscript originally consisted of eight numbered palm leaves with illustrations – incised with a sharp knife and then inked with black ink – on one side, and brief explanations in Balinese on the reverse, between two bamboo covers.  The fourth leaf was given to his girlfriend, who had it framed as an artwork in its own right.  It subsequently travelled with her to Australia and on to South Africa, before coming back to London only recently.  

The seven leaves acquired by the British Library in July 1970 were given the shelfmark Or.13277.  The manuscript – which was probably written within a few decades of its purchase – narrates an episode from the Balinese version of the Sutasoma Kakawin, an Old Javanese Buddhist court poem perhaps dating from the 14th century, remotely related to the Maha-sutasoma-jataka.  The illustrations depict the arrival of Prince Sutasoma on the island Gili Mas [Small Gold Isle] in a lake at Benares, to wed the Princess Candravati, sister of King Dasabahu.  Archived correspondence shows that the then Keeper of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books of the British Museum, Dr G.E. Marrison, had enthusiastically set about getting the greatest experts in Balinese literature to work on the manuscript.  He first contacted Dr C. Hooykaas, Reader in Old Javanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, who in 1968 had published a facsimile edition of the British Museum’s finest illustrated Balinese manuscript, Bagus Umbara (Or. 12579).  Hooykaas in turn had consulted Prof. Ensink of Groningen, an expert on the Sutasoma story, and eventually sent Marrison in August 1970 a full reading of the Balinese text found on each leaf, together with an English translation.  As these notes do not appear ever to have been published, they are presented here alongside a picture of each illustrated leaf, together with an image of the reverse of the first leaf to show the Balinese writing.


Or.13277, f.1r & f.1v. Puniki Gili Mas, sami kuri, umah, priyangan kayu-2, sami khmas, kahilehi tlagā, mmageṅ bvaya mahā yan, tan dadi kanak mrika. ‘This represents Gili Mas, gates, houses, chapels/temples, trees, all of them golden, encircled by a lake; great crocodiles, it is forbidden with the result that people do not go thither.’


Or.13277, f.2r. Sampun pada ravuh riṅ Gili Keñcana, Sraṅ Devi Pramésvari, Devi Candravati, taṅkil inṅ  i raka, Saṅ Prabhu Dasabahu, Saṅ Sutasoma. ‘All have arrived at Gili Mas; the two Devi pay homage to Sang Prabhu Dasabahu and Sang Sutasoma.’


Or.13277, f.3r. I bvaya, dadi raksasa, ṅuniṅayaṅ dévanya, pacaṅ dadi kreteg, sareṅ papat, riṅ Saṅ Sutasoma. ‘The crocodiles, having become monsters, inform their god that the four of them will become a bridge on behalf of Sutasoma.’


Or. 13277, f.4r.  This is the well-travelled leaf, now restored to its correct position in the manuscript.  Although the text on the reverse has not yet been read, the scene evidently shows the crocodiles of f.3 in their guise as monsters.


Or.13277, f.5r. I bvaya sampun dadi kṛteg ka Gili Keñcana. ‘The crocodiles have been transformed into a bridge leading to Gili Mas.’


Or.13277, f.6r. Vidyadhari kahutus, maṅda luṅa ka Gili Keñcana, dadi juru hyas, pavaraṅan, Saṅ Hyaṅ Buddha. ‘The heavenly nymph goes to Gili Mas to be a chamber maid; conversation; Lord God Buddha.’


Or.13277, f.7r. Vidyadhari bluṅa ka Gili Keñcana, dadi juru hyas. ‘The heavenly nymph goes to Gili Mas to be a chamber maid.’


Or.13277, f.8r. Devi Saci, vidyadhari, luṅha ka Gili Keñcana. 'Devi Saci and the heavenly nymph on their way to Gili Mas.’

Further reading

C. Hooykaas, Bagus Umbarara, Prince of Koripan.  The story of a Prince of Bali and a Princess of Java, illustrated on palm leaves by a Balinese artist, with Balinese text and English translation.  [Or. 12579].  London: British Museum, 1968.

Raechelle Rubinstein, ‘Leaves of palm: Balinese lontar’ in: Illuminations: the writing traditions of Indonesia: featuring manuscripts from the National Library of Indonesia, ed. by Ann Kumar and John H. McGlynn.  New York: Weatherhill; Jakarta: Lontar Foundation, 1996, pp.129-154.

Annabel Teh Gallop
Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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