Asian and African studies blog

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

Imagine being a position to commission a magnificent one-volume selection of the reading matter you would most like to carry around on your travels – a kind of miniature personal library. With no expense spared, you could order the most skilful calligraphers in the land to write it, the best painters to illustrate it, the best illuminators to decorate it, the best binders to bind it…

Such was the good fortune of Jalāl al-Dīn Iskandar Sultan ibn ‘Umar Shaykh, grandson of the famous Central Asian conqueror Tīmūr (Tamerlane). Iskandar ruled much of southern Iran for just five years (1409-1414) before meeting his death after rebelling against Shāh Rukh, his overlord. Iskandar was an enthusiastic and discerning patron of the arts and learning, and a number of the exquisite Persian manuscripts produced for him have survived. Amongst the most remarkable of these are his two Miscellanies, one of which is preserved at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon (MS. L.A. 161) and the other at the British Library (Add. 27261), now fully digitised as part of our Digital Access to Persian Manuscripts sponsored by the Iran Heritage Foundation and others. Thanks to a generous grant from the Andor Trust, selected folios from the London volume are now available to view and study, with notes and a number of translated extracts, as a ʻTurning the Pagesʼ presentation.

The opening of Timur’s grandson Iskandar Sultan’s pocket miscellany containing 23 works. Copied 813-4/1410-11 (BL Add.27261, ff 2v-3r)

The Miscellanies of Iskandar Sultan, then, are illustrated compendia of texts. Those in the first half of our volume were copied by Muḥammad al-Ḥalvā’ī, and the remainder by Nāṣir al-Kātib; their work is dated 813-814/1410-1411. We do not know who was responsible for the illumination and paintings; but some of the latter are probably by Pīr Aḥmad Bāgh-shimālī, reputedly the greatest artist of his time. Notable features of the book include the small page size (182 x 129 mm.) and writing; exquisitely detailed and inventive illumination; and jewel-like miniature paintings. The manuscript has been skilfully restored by British Library conservators and rebound in traditional Islamic style to open as flat as possible. Because the new binding is undecorated, for ‘Turning the Pages’ the covers from a different manuscript were used instead.

The texts chosen by the royal patron and/or his advisers could hardly have been more miscellaneous. They include a wide-ranging selection of religious, narrative and lyrical poetry; in prose, there are treatises on astronomy and astrology, geometry, medicine, farriery, alchemy, history, and Islamic law. In this ʻTurning the Pagesʼ production we have tried to make a representative selection of the 1092 pages (i.e. 546 folios), in the hope of doing justice, as far as possible, to the quality and wide variety of texts, decorative designs, and images.

A detailed description of the contents is available here. For present purposes, therefore, it will suffice to mention some of their interesting features, with a brief discussion of a few pages by way of example.

The poetical texts in the first half of the Miscellany all consist of parts or the whole of well-known lengthy works in masnavī form (rhyming couplets).

In this miniature, an illustration to Niẓāmī’s Iskandar-nāmah (‘Epic of Alexander the Great’), Alexander and his servant witness the enchanting and innocent spectacle of young girls bathing together at night in a pool out in the wilds. The sophistication of this painting is to some extent disguised by the simplicity of the composition (BL Add.27261, f 286r)

The Miscellany also includes qaṣīdas, poems in monorhyme, in praise of the Prophet Muḥammad or the Imams of the Shī‘a. Others are technical tours de force, single poems incorporating as many different metres or rhetorical devices as possible. Next comes a selection of over two hundred poems in the shorter ghazal form. This is complemented by a more extensive anthology, occupying the outer text panels of almost three hundred pages. Categorised variously by subject, genre or metre, it contains ghazals and other poems by over three hundred authors. Famous contributors include Farrukhī, Manūchihrī, Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Salmān-i Sāvajī, Amīr Khusraw, Ḥāfiẓ (one of the earliest known textual sources), and ‘Imād-i Faqīh. These last two both feature in a previous blog posting: see Jahangir’s Hafiz and the Madrasa Jurist. Others are little known today; whether their verse was fashionable in 8th/14th century southern Iran, and what criteria were applied by the compilers of Iskandar Sultan’s two Miscellanies would be an intriguing topic for literary historians to investigate.

As for the prose contents of Add. 27261, their subject areas have been enumerated above. The inclusion of a summary of jurisprudence according to the Ja‘farī school (mazhab) followed by Imāmī (Ithnā-‘Asharī) Shī‘īs is another indication, coupled with the above-mentioned poems in praise of the Imams, of interest in Shī‘ism at a time when the great majority of Iran’s population was Sunnī. There is also a concise guide to sacred law pertaining to religious obligations attributed (even though it is in Persian) to Abū Ḥanīfa, main founder of the (Sunnī) Ḥanafī juristic school.

Ā’īnah-’i Sikandarī, a treatise on alchemy named after Iskandar Sultan, was written expressly for him, as was Risālah-’i Kibrīt-i aḥmar (‘Red Sulphur’), on the same subject. Mukhtaṣar dar ‘ilm-i Uqlīdis. ‘Elements of Geometry’, presents some theorems from the first book of Euclid’s work, complete with illuminated geometrical figures and adorned with illuminated margins incorporating verses in praise of a patron and here doubtless intended for Iskandar Sultan. Here is an example:

From a translation of Euclid's ‘Elements of Geometry’ (BL Add.27261, f 344r)

Finally, a large proportion of the second half of the Miscellany is devoted to astronomy and astrology. This fact, coupled with the magnificent illuminated ‘Horoscope of Iskandar Sultan’ (now preserved at the Wellcome Institute, just half a mile along Euston Road from the British Library) suggest that the Sultan had a strong interest in such matters. The computation of calendars and the use of the astrolabe are described in Ma‘rifat-i taqvīm va usṭurlāb. Lastly, some of the 340 pages devoted to Rawẓat al-munajjimīn, a comprehensive early treatise on astrology, are enlivened by colourful, imaginative and exotic drawings in the margins. At the end of the copying process some blank pages remained, and it appears that at least one artist was literally ‘given carte blanche’ to decorate them in any matter he wished.
Marginal illustrations (BL Add.27261, f 542v)

Who decided what to put into the Miscellany? Did Iskandar choose for himself, or did others help? The manuscript has sometimes been described as a kind of encyclopaedia, but even with the contents of the Lisbon volume added, one would not only have a few subject areas covered; there is an abundance of great imaginative poetry but little practical information. If asked to design a ‘Swiss knife’ book for a Sultan, I think I might include some of the following (besides the poetry and jurisprudence): a cookbook; guides to hunting and to edible plants; at least as much geography as history; a primer of navigation by land and sea; a concise multilingual phrasebook; and prayers, passages from Scripture, and other words of wisdom and consolation for hard times. (The British Library has a kind of miniature miscellany compiled by the novelist George Eliot.) In any case, as a great bibliophile Iskandar must have been a happy man when the Miscellany was first presented to him for inspection. We hope you too will enjoy exploring the ‘Turning the Pages’ version of the Miscellany of Iskandar Sultan – and, perhaps, choosing what you would put in your Miscellany.

For a detailed catalogue description with links to the individual works and paintings see Description of Add. 27261.

Further Reading

Basil Gray, Persian Painting (London, 1961 and reprinted).

Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn M. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles; Washington, DC, 1989).

Priscilla Soucek, ‘The Manuscripts of Iskandar Sultan: Structure and Content’ in Timurid Art and Culture, ed. L. Golombek and M. Subtelny (Leiden and New York, 1992), pp. 116-131.

Muhammad Isa Waley, Asian and African Studies

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.

When I first joined the British Library in 1986 as Curator for Maritime Southeast Asia, my official remit was manuscripts and printed books and periodicals in the vernacular languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines. I also regarded myself as having a ‘watching brief’ on other materials in the British Library relating to the Malay world, ranging from East India Company archives to prints and drawings of the region. But in the present digital age, the wealth of collections in the British Library relating to Indonesia in particular has expanded exponentially through the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP).

The EAP, which was founded in 2004, is funded by Arcadia (previously known as the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Foundation) and administered by the British Library.  It aims to preserve in the form of (digital) reproductions archive material deemed to be in danger of survival.  The original material is retained by its owners, but digital copies are deposited both in the country of origin and at the British Library.  The EAP offers grants for both pilot projects, which usually yield a survey and images of a small sample of manuscripts, and major digitisation projects.  To date the EAP has funded 13 projects in Indonesia. (Strangely enough, there have been few applications for projects in Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei or Singapore).  There are also two projects in Timor Leste, and one on manuscripts from Vietnam in Cham, an Austronesian language.  


One of three Cham manuscripts digitised through the 2012 pilot project EAP531, Preserving the endangered manuscripts of the Cham people in Vietnam: an Islamic manuscript containing selections from the Qur'an and prayers, in Cham and Arabic, from Vietnam,19th c (with thanks to Ervan Nurtawab for this identification).  EAP531/1/2. 

Under the terms of the EAP, the digital copies sent to the British Library will be made freely available online for research purposes.  In practice it has taken some time to process the images and to solve technical issues, but six of the Indonesian projects are now fully catalogued and accessible online, while the other seven projects are in varying stages of completion.  And what surprises they bring!  It would not be an exaggeration to say that the manuscript collections now made accessible digitally through the EAP have begun to change our understanding of the landscape of the writing traditions of the Malay world.  

The first and most striking impression is the overwhelming predominance of Islamic texts, in the form of copies of the Qur’an, prayer books and sermons, and works on ritual obligations, theology, and Sufism.  This should be contrasted with the strong literary, historical and legal slant of collections of Malay and Indonesian manuscripts held in Europe, and those in Southeast Asia formed under colonial auspices.  

The second, and related, point is the very high proportion of manuscripts written in Arabic, rather than in vernacular Southeast Asian languages.  Such manuscripts have tended to fall under the radar of most academic programmes of Indonesian and Malay studies.  For example, the authoritative catalogue of Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain by M.C. Ricklefs and P. Voorhoeve (London, 1977) lists manuscripts in Austronesian languages ranging from Balinese, Batak and Bugis to Javanese, Makasarese, Malay, Old Javanese and Sundanese, but not in Arabic.  And yet a full appreciation of the totality of writings produced within a culture is an important context from which to appreciate better the composition of texts in indigenous languages such as Malay and Javanese.

A third consideration is the great codicological value of these newly-documented manuscripts, often still cared for within the community within which they were created. As such, they are rich sources of information on traditional binding materials and storage methods – aspects of book history nearly always lost when an Oriental manuscript entered a western library, and was rebound or rehoused in accordance with European conventions.

The large volume of fragile materials being digitised in difficult conditions in the field means that inevitably there are problems with metadata supplied by project teams: titles are not always accurate, languages are sometimes misidentified, and a few items described as 'manuscripts' are in fact printed.  However these caveats are more than compensated for by the richness of the material now being made accessible for the first time.  Listed below are the six EAP projects from Indonesia which are now fully accessible online.

EAP276, Documentation and preservation of Ambon manuscripts
Although the central Moluccas has a large Christian population, this project of 2009 documented 182 mainly Islamic manuscripts from 12 collections on Ambon and the smaller neighbouring island of Haruku.
Calligraphic batik cloth binding of a finely illuminated Kitab mawlid manuscript containing songs in Arabic in praise of the Prophet, 19th c., from the collection of Husain Hatuwe, Ambon. EAP276/7/32.

EAP229, Acehnese manuscripts in danger of extinction: identifying and preserving the private collections located in Pidie and Aceh Besar regencies
EAP329, Digitising private collections of Acehnese manuscripts located in Pidie and Aceh Besar Regencies
The pilot project (EAP229) of 2008 surveyed the region and digitised 10 manuscripts; this was followed by a major project (EAP329) in 2009 which digitised 483 manuscripts in Arabic, Malay and Acehnese.

Ma'rifat al-fatihah, one of 118 manuscripts owned by Teungku Mukhlis of Calue, Pidie Regency.  Shown here is Syair Kalimat, a Sufi explication in Malay verse of the confession of faith, the title set within a dramatically graphic rendering of the shahada (Ini syair kalimat baca oleh kamu, hai ya ikhwan, supaya kamu faham akan dia) .  EAP329/1/90.

EAP205, Endangered manuscripts of Western Sumatra: collections of Sufi brotherhoods
A pilot project in 2008 digitised 7 manuscripts held in surau (prayer houses) in West Sumatra.  

Undang-undang Minangkabau, a Minangkabau legal digest in Malay, from the collection of the Surau Gadang Ampalu in Kabupaten Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra.  EAP205/2/2.

EAP280, Retrieving heritage: rare Old Javanese and Old Sundanese manuscripts from West Java (stage one)
This project of 2009 digitised 28 palm leaf manuscripts, comprising 27 from the sanctuary (kabuyutan) at Ciburuy in Garut Regency, West Java, and possibly dating from the 14th-16th centuries, and one manuscript from the private collection of Mr Kartani in Cirebon.

Nipah Kropak Ciburuy I (Buana Pitu?).  EAP280/1/2.

EAP365 Preservation of Makassarese lontara’ pilot project
This pilot project of 2010 was able to make representative images from seven 20th-century manuscripts written in Makassarese and Arabic held in Makassar, capital city of South Sulawesi, and in a number of villages in Kecamatan Galesong south of the city.  
Kotika Boddia, divination manual, from the collection of Daeng Tiro, Desa Boddia, Galesong, South Sulawesi, Indonesia [1920s]. EAP365/3/2.

Projects mostly completed but not yet accessible online:
•    EAP061, The MIPES Indonesia: digitising Islamic manuscripts of Indonesian Pondok Pesantren
•    EAP117, Digitising ‘sacred heirloom’ in private collections in Kerinci, Sumatra, Indonesia
•    EAP144, The digitisation of Minangkabau’s manuscript collections in Suraus
•    EAP153, Riau manuscripts: the gateway to the Malay intellectual world
•    EAP211, Digitising Cirebon manuscripts
•    EAP212, Locating, documenting and digitising: preserving the endangered manuscripts of the legacy of the Sultanate of Buton, South-Eastern Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

•    EAP352, Endangered manuscripts of Western Sumatra and the province of Jambi: collections of Sufi brotherhoods

For further information about the Endangered Archives Programme, contact the Grants Administrator, Cathy Collins: [email protected], and subscribe to their blog.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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Meditation is an essential part of Buddhism. It aims to develop mental discipline and to cultivate a wholesome, alert state of mind which eventually results in the practice of Dhamma. Meditation, often combined with chanting methods, helps to reach a mental state of happiness (piti) which is one of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (satta bojjhanga), which are: mindfulness, investigation, effort, happiness, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.

Happiness in the Buddhist sense, however, should not be misinterpreted as a state of individual happiness or temporary contentment. It cannot be self-centered or selfish but is rather a state of mind that has overcome all desire (tanha) –the principal cause of suffering (dukkha). Dukkha is often described as suffering or pain, but it also refers to impermanence and change, as well as to conditioned states of mind, i.e. being dependent on or affected by something/someone. Meditation is a powerful tool which can overcome such states of mind by focusing in different ways on the body, on emotion, and on the conscious or unconscious mind. Common methods of contemplation can be by breath and body movements, by means of a meditational device (a candle flame, metal object, beads or a mandala drawing), and also through sounds and smells (senses and emotions).

Fragment of a manual of a Buddhist mystic (yogacavara) on meditation practices, including morbid meditations. Or.14447, f 4

Although it is no longer widely practiced, morbid meditation is possibly the most efficient of all meditation practices aiming to overcome conditioned states of the mind and emotion. It is described in the Buddha’s discourse on the practice of mindfulness (Maha Satipatthana Sutta), one of the earliest Buddhist teachings. According to Buddhaghosa, a fifth-century Buddhist scholar who compiled numerous commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings, morbid meditation is explained as follows:

As though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground – one, two, three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter… being devoured by crows, hawks, vultures, jackals, or worms… a skeleton with flesh and blood, held together with sinews… disconnected bones scattered in all directions bones bleached white, the colour of shells… bones, heaped up, more than a year old… bones rotten and crumbling to dust – a monk compares his own body, ‘this body too is of the same nature, it will end up like that, it is not exempt from that fate.’ In this way, he abides contemplating the body as body… and he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. (Skilling, p. 30)

Or.13703, fol. 35

The highest state of meditation is reached when both attraction and repulsion cease to exist: ‘In the arahant, there is neither liking nor disliking: he regards all things with perfect equanimity, as did Thera Maha Moggallana when he accepted a handful of rice from a leper.’ (Francis Story).

Morbid meditations are very well documented in Thai manuscript painting. Many manuscripts about the famous monk Phra Malai (see my post ‘A Thai book of merit: Phra Malai’s journeys to heaven and hell’) include one or more scenes of morbid meditations. These manuscripts were often commissioned by families of deceased persons as funeral presentation volumes. The Thai, Lao and Cambodian Collections of the British Library hold over 20 such manuscripts, all of them beautifully illustrated with scenes from the monk’s encounters and his teachings to the lay people.

Illustrations of the monk Phra Malai meditating over corpses. On the left side, he touches the burial cloth of the deceased which is believed to be a method to transfer merit to the dead. Or.14838, fol. 7

In most cases, the meditation scenes in these manuscript paintings depict one monk (in the context of the legend of Phra Malai this would be the monk Phra Malai himself) sitting or standing in meditation near one or more decaying corpses. The monk is usually shown with one or more of his paraphernalia such as a fan, an alms bowl, an umbrella or a walking stick. The walking stick fulfils various purposes: to scare away small animals when the monk is walking, or to provide support during seating or standing meditation, but sometimes the monk can be seen touching a corpse with his walking stick in order to transfer merit to the deceased while meditating.

Illustrations showing two corpses, one being eaten by animals and the other wrapped in a sheet made from bamboo sticks, with the monk Phra Malai touching the wrapped body with his walking stick. Or.13703, f 9

The bodies of the dead are usually shown bloated and in a greyish colour, often with wounds discharging blood and pus, wide eyes, and in an obvious state of decay. Sometimes animals can be seen feeding on the corpses.

Lay people practising morbid meditation as shown in a Phra Malai manuscript. Or.14559, fol. 73

It is not only monks who are shown practising morbid meditation in Thai manuscript paintings. The story of Phra Malai includes a scene where the monk teaches lay people what he has heard from Metteya, the future Buddha, about what will happen to mankind. While violent humans kill each other, those who follow the Dhamma – lay people and monks alike - will hide in caves meditating, and in some cases meditating over corpses until the fighting is over.

Further Reading

Brereton, Bonnie Pacala. Thai Tellings of Phra Malai: Texts and Rituals concerning a Popular Buddhist Saint. Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University, 1995
Maha Satipatthana Sutta: the Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, with notes by Michael Potter on a 14 tape commentary by Bhikkhu Bodhi
Skilling, Peter. “The aesthetics of devotion: Buddhist arts of Thailand”. In Enlightened ways: The many Streams of Buddhist Art in Thailand. Singapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2012, pp. 18-31
Soma Thera. The Way of Mindfulness: the Satipatthana Sutta and its Commentary, 1998
Story, Francis. Buddhist Meditation: the Anagarika Sugatananda, 1995

Jana Igunma, Asian and African Studies

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A Thai book of merit: Phra Malai's journeys to heaven and hell

Among the Persian treasures recently digitised with the generous support of the Iran Heritage Foundation is a fine illustrated copy (BL Add. 7735) of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (‘Speech of the Birds’), a Sufi allegory of the quest for God. Links to the three previous posts on this work are given below in this, the last in the series, which discusses the final three miniature paintings (see Titley, p. 35) and the accompanying text, in relation to ‘Aṭṭār’s poem and some of its principal themes.

As regards the date of Add. 7735 and the style of its miniatures, there are certain points of similarity with a copy of Manṭiq al-ṭayr completed in 860/1456, probably at Herat. This manuscript is preserved at the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, and has been fully digitised (see Ms. or. oct. 268). In this Berlin Manṭiq al-ṭayr the shading and contours of the landscapes are occasionally comparable, though the sky is invariably gold rather than blue. The figures are drawn with less assurance and are much less animated. Again, there are contrasts as well as similarities between the respective treatments of, for example, Shaykh Ṣan‘ān espying the Christian maiden (Ms. or. oct. 268, f 49r, compare Add.7753, f 49r), and the prince with the beggar at the gallows (Ms. or. oct.268, f 174r, compare Add.7735, f 181v below). Finally, there is no imaginative use of the margins. On balance, therefore, one is still inclined to favour a considerably later date for Add. 7735 (see my first post).

The king is admonished by an ascetic (BL Add.7735, f 91r)

The inevitability of death is, as we have seen, one of ‘Aṭṭār’s main themes. This miniature, folio 91r (ed. Gawharīn, p. 120), shows a king, who has summoned all and sundry to admire his new palace, receiving a sharp admonition from an unimpressed ascetic. Despite its flawless appearance, there is an invisible fissure in one wall through which ‘Azrā’īl, the Angel of Death, will one day enter to collect the king’s soul.

Everybody was coming from every land
    to pay homage, bringing trays filled with largesse.
The king summoned the wise men and courtiers
    to his presence, and seated them on a dais.
‘Never shall this palace of mine,’ said he,
    ‘be matched in beauty or in perfection.’
All declared that on the face of the Earth
    none had seen its like, and none ever would.
An ascetic stood up, and said ‘Fortunate One,
     there is one fissure here, and it is a grave fault.
Had your palace no flaw in the shape of that chink,
    you could give Heaven’s castles away for it.’
Said the monarch, ‘No rift have I seen in it;
     you’re making trouble out of ignorance.’
‘You who are so proud to be king’ said the sage,
     ‘there’s a crack there, wide open for ‘Azrā’īl…’

Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna is waylaid by an importunate beggar (BL Add.7735, f 151r)

Another favourite theme is the fate of those who fall passionately in love with someone completely unattainable. For ‘Aṭṭār, the case of God's true lovers is similar. In the story illustrated on folio 151r (ed. Gawharīn, p. 191), Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna and his page Ayāz are waylaid by an importunate beggar who is infatuated with Ayāz. He announces to the Sultan that the two of them are alike, in that both are like polo balls struck this way and that by the mallet of passionate love for Ayāz – and if the Sultan were a truly devoted lover, he too would be happy to sacrifice his life for his beloved. Having spoken these words, the beggar collapses and dies at the feet of his beloved.

He said, ‘While I’m alive I’m not destitute yet:
    I’m a fake and not worthy of this assembly.
But if I fling my life away for love’s sake,
    flinging life away is the sign of the bankrupt.
Where, Maḥmūd, is the reality of love in you?
    Fling your life away – or drop your claim to love!’
Thus he spoke, and his spirit departed this world –
    gave his life in a trice for his loved one’s face.

A prince rescues a beggar from the gallows (BL Add.7735, f 181v)

The same theme recurs in the final illustrated excerpt, folio 181v (ed. Gawharīn, p. 227). A beggar  who has publicly declared that he is in love with a prince receives a visit from him. The king, his father, orders that the importunate man be executed; but once his vizier has described his wretched and helpless condition the king relents and sends the prince to go and sit with the poor man, comfort him, and bring him to the royal presence. The beautiful prince hastens to the rescue of his unintended victim, who lies prostrate at the gallows. ‘Aṭṭār tells us:

At this point, [readers,] let go for sheer joy.
    and dance about, waving your hands and feet.
That prince finally came to the foot of the gallows;
    a tumult like the Resurrection arose.
That beggar he saw in a state like death –
    saw him fallen headlong onto the dust…

But our happiness for the reprieved lover is short-lived. No sooner has the prince exchanged a few words with him than the beggar, overwhelmed with joy and rapture at having finally seen and spoken with his beloved, utters a loud cry and dies.

In concluding this series of postings, this question come to mind: what are we to make of the choice of episodes for illustration in this elegant copy of Manṭiq al-ṭayr, a work rarely illustrated?

Of the nine miniatures in Add. 7735, most accompany tales of death, passion apparently doomed to be thwarted, or a failure of will, the exceptions being those of Shaykh Ṣan‘ān, Sultan Mas‘ūd as a fisherman, and the man rescued from idolatry. Very probably the subjects were either chosen by the patron or by the artist(s), or else in consultation between them. The preoccupation with death may, then, reflect the mindset of one or both parties, or a concern that the wealthy patron be reminded of such matters; or it may be a matter of subconscious inclination. There is no point in speculating further; but it may be relevant to point to the discussions of ‘Aṭṭār and his treatment of the darker and lighter sides of death in Ritter’s major study and in an article by the present writer (see below, ‘Further reading’).

In ‘Aṭṭār’s eyes, all of humankind are beggars in need of the help and mercy of a king before whom we are nothing – unless we have love and adoration for Him, in which case divine compassion is bound to embrace us in the Hereafter. In the world’s quest literature, often the hero(ine) must descend into realms of darkness before reaching the light and fulfilling his or her quest. Where ‘Aṭṭār, in his allegories of self-transcendence, takes us with the soul-birds into darkness, he does so in order to bring us to back to the divine Sīmurgh and to a greater, and everlasting, light.

Translations by Muhammad Isa Waley

Further reading
‘Aṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm. Manṭiq al-ṭayr (Maqāmāt al-ṭuyūr). Ed. and comm. Sayyid Ṣādiq Gawharīn. Tehran, 1342/1963.

Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Tr. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. London, 1984. New illustrated edition: The Canticle of the Birds by Farîd-ud-Dîn‘Attâr: Illustrated through Persian and Eastern Islamic Art, Paris 2014.

Lukens, Marie G. ‘The Fifteenth-Century miniatures”. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 25, no. 9: The Language of the Birds (May, 1967), pp. 317-38.

Ritter, Helmut. The Ocean of the Soul: men, the world and God in the stories of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār. Tr. J. O’Kane. Leiden, 2003.

Stchoukine, I. et al., Illuminierte Handschriften (Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland 16). Wiesbaden 1971.

Titley, N.M. Miniatures from Persian manuscripts. London, 1974.

Waley, M. I.  ‘Didactic style and self-criticism in ‘Aṭṭār.’ In: ‘Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. L. Lewisohn and C. Shackle. London, 2007.

Muhammad Isa Waley, Asian and African Studies

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Mantiq al-tayr ('the Speech of Birds'), part 3

Mantiq al-tayr ('the Speech of Birds'), part 2

'The Speech of the Birds': an illustrated Persian manuscript

Significant Judeo-Persian handwritten books, some dating back to the early Middle Ages have been stored for decades in established Judaica libraries across Europe, the USA and elsewhere. Notwithstanding, lack of knowledge about their existence due chiefly to limited or barred access to uncatalogued collections, has meant that their study has undesirably lagged behind. Inadequate mastery of Persian coupled with unfamiliarity with the Persian and Judeo-Persian literary traditions, may also explain why this field of study remained undeveloped for a lengthy period.

Torat Mosheh, the earliest dated Judeo-Persian translation of the Pentateuch. Iran, 1319 (BL Or.5446, ff. 102-3)

Written in Hebrew characters, Judeo-Persian manuscripts and imprints are essentially works composed in a Persian dialect that closely resembles ‘classical’ or ‘literary’ Persian, combined with Hebrew words. The practice of writing the Persian language in Hebrew letters has been in use by Jews in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia for over a millennium. Similar practices had equally been adopted by Jews living in other diaspora communities. Relevant examples include works in Arabic (see my previous post “A Judeo-Arabic serial printed in Bombay”), German, Greek, Italian and Spanish which were written or printed in Hebrew script.  The centuries-long tradition of utilising the Hebrew alphabet for the local language was the diaspora Jews’ manifest way of preserving their identity and their cultural and historical heritage.

An untapped resource hidden in public and private collections, Judeo-Persian works aroused the attention of scholars only in the nineteenth century, and increasingly since the second half of the past century to this day. The nineteenth century witnessed the appearance of erudite catalogues of significant Hebrew manuscript and printed book holdings in academic libraries, which included also Judeo-Persian material that hitherto had been inaccessible to researchers. Since then there has been a proliferation of scholarly publications, bibliographies, journal articles and exhibitions devoted solely to this area of study.

The British Library, one of the greatest repositories of Hebrew manuscripts and printed books in the Western world comprises a modest, yet valuable collection of Judeo-Persian manuscripts and imprints. The manuscripts, numbering nearly 60 volumes containing some 100 different texts were acquired within a period spanning more than one hundred and fifty years. The first comprehensive inventory of the Library’s Judeo-Persian manuscripts was compiled by Dr Joseph Rosenwasser in 1966. Titled Judeo-Persian manuscripts in the British Museum, it described a total of 45 manuscripts,  26 of which had been acquired in the 19^th century, while the remaining 19 came from the library of Dr Moses Gaster (1856-1939), the Romanian-born spiritual leader of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation, London. The Gaster collection comprising some 1300 manuscripts was sold to the British Museum in 1925. Ten Judeo-Persian manuscripts added to the collection between 1966 and 1994, have been described by Vera Basch Moreen in her article “A supplementary list of Judaeo-Persian manuscripts”, British Library Journal 21,1 (1995) pp. 71-80. Judeo-Persian manuscripts that have been purchased since, have yet to be analysed and discussed, hopefully in a future blog.  

Our Judeo-Persian collection comprises a variety of texts ranging from biblical translations (tafsir), liturgies, illuminated versified paraphrases of Persian epics and stories, Jewish legal texts such as, for example, sections from Moses Maimonides’ monumental code the Mishneh Torah (‘Repetition of the Law’), divans of Persian and Jewish poetry, dictionaries, glossaries and many more. The earliest collection item dating from the 8^th century is a Judeo-Persian trade letter (British Library Or. 8212/166), which the famed British explorer Sir Aurel Stein in 1901 found at Dandan-Uiliq, an important Buddhist trading centre on the Silk Road in Chinese Turkestan.

The colophon of Torat Mosheh. Iran, 1319 (BL Or.5446)

The 1319 handwritten copy of Torat Mosheh  (Or. 5446) in our collection had been unknown in scholarly circles until its acquisition in 1898. It has since been acknowledged as the earliest dated Judeo-Persian text of the Pentateuch.  The manuscript has been copied on paper and has 124 folios; it is imperfect at the beginning and has many lacunae.  For example, the first 2 chapters of Genesis and the whole of Exodus  are missing.  So are chapters from Leviticus and Numbers. Many folios have been bound in the wrong order. The Hebrew colophon on folio 124v was signed  by Joseph ben Moses who states that he had completed copying “This Torah of Moses” on Friday, 24^th Adar in the year 1630 of contracts, which corresponds to 15^th March, 1319 AD. The name Abu Saʻid is also mentioned in the colophon, but this person’s role is somewhat unclear. Some scholars have argued that Joseph ben Moses was only the scribe, whereas Abu Saʻid was responsible for the Judeo-Persian translation. Others have claimed that Joseph ben Moses was the translator while Abu Saʻid served as his model.

Torat Adonai,  Constantinople: Eliezer ben Gershom Soncino,  1546. Beginning of Genesis with 2 woodcuts of the Hebrew letter 'bet' (BL Or. 70.c.10)

The Library’s Judeo-Persian printed holdings are equally modest, but their rarity more than makes up for their small numbers. Records for these books  are scattered in four printed catalogues, the earliest of which found  in Joseph Zedner’s and Van Straalen’s  - are now accessible on-line.

Torat Mosheh (‘Moses’ Law’),  a Judeo-Persian translation of the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch copied in 1319, and Torat Adonai, (‘God’s Law’),  a polyglot Pentateuch containing Jacob Tavusi’s  Judeo-Persian translation, which was printed at Constantinople in 1546, are undoubtedly true gems in the Library’s collection.

Torat Adonai, Constantinople: Eliezer ben Gershom Soncino,  1546
Detail. The right column contains Jacob Tavusi's Judeo-Persian ('Farsi' in Hebrew) translation (BL Or. 70.c.10)

Jacob Tavusi’s  rendition was long regarded as the oldest surviving Judeo-Persian translation of the Bible. The same text transcribed into Arabic script by Thomas Hyde was reprinted in the famed Bishop Brian Walton’s  Polyglot,  issued in London 1655-1657. The realisation that earlier Judeo-Persian translations of the Scriptures pre-dating Tavusi’s had existed already and may have been used by Tavusi as models, came only in the 19^th century after the discovery of early Judeo-Persian biblical manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah and the acquisition of Judeo-Persian manuscripts by major European libraries.  

Decorated title page of Torat Adonai, Constantinople: Eliezer ben Gershom Soncino,  1546 (BL Or. 70.c.10)

Our rare copy of Torat Adonai  is a beautifully crafted specimen boasting a finely decorated title page and handsome woodcuts of initial Hebrew letters.  It  was printed at  the press of Eliezer Soncino, the last member of the famed Jewish Italian family of printers.  The family was named after Soncino, a  town in the Duchy of Milan in northern Italy, where it set up a Hebrew printing-press in 1483. Eliezer worked at Constantinople from 1534 to 1547 taking over the printing branch  his remarkable father Gershom had established there a few years prior to his death in 1533. 

Further reading
M. Seligsohn,  “The Hebrew-Persian Mss of the British Museum”,  Jewish Quarterly Review 15, no. 58, Jan. 1903, pp. 278-301.
Herbert H. Paper, “Judeo-Persian Bible Translations”, in Translation of Scripture: proceedings of a conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, May 15-16, 1989, pp. 139-160.
V.B. Moreen, In Queen Esther's Garden. An Anthology of Judeo-Persian literature, translated and with an introduction and notes (Yale Judaica Series), 2000.
Jes P. Asmussen, “BIBLE vi. Judeo-Persian Translations”, in Encylopædia Iranica online.
– , Studies in Judeo-Persian Literature, Leiden, 1973.
Wilhelm Bacher, “Judaeo-Persian,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, New York and London, 1907, pp. 313-24.
Walter J. Fischel, “The Bible in Persian Translation,” Harvard Theological Review 14, 1952, pp. 3-45.
Thamar E. Gindin,  ha-Perush le-sefer Yeḥezkel be-parsit-yehudit kedumah. (‘An old Judeo-Persian interpretation to the Book of Ezekiel’), Pe‘amim 84, 2000, pp. 40-54.
Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, eds.,  Irano-Judaica: Studies Relating to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture throughout the Ages, 5 vols., Jerusalem, 1982-2003.

Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Studies

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Opening up the Hebrew manuscript collection

The collection of Indian paintings in the former India Office Library’s Prints and Drawings section (now British Library Visual Arts) is famous above all for its individual imperial Mughal and later Mughal paintings, forming a complement to the collection of illustrated Mughal manuscripts that came to the British Library from the British Museum’s collections.  Not so well known are the individual items from other schools of Indian painting, particularly the Rajasthani and Pahari paintings.  The collection of Pahari paintings was very small when described by Toby Falk and Mildred Archer for their seminal 1981 catalogue, and it still is, but this post will pick out the highlights of what was in the collection in 1981 and the paintings acquired subsequently.

We begin with four paintings acquired since the publication of the 1981 catalogue showing the Pahari style in its early form little influenced by Mughal painting.

Mangala, the planet Mars, holding mace and water-pot and unusually riding a tiger.  By a Mankot artist, c.1700-20.  83 by 131 mm; page 107 by 155 mm.  Add.Or.4318, acquired 1986.

Mangala wears a lotus-topped crown, a sprigged dhoti, and a muslin dupatta with flowered ends, and rides facing left on a snarling orange and white tiger.  The ground is a dark red, with a narrow band of cloud-streaked sky at the top and another of green at the bottom; the latter is lightly applied over the dark red ground, and is relieved by clumps of white daisies.  Inscribed above in white takri characters is the name Magala and on the verso is a verse detailing the consequences good or evil of seeing the planet, indicating the painting comes from a dream manual.  The iconography is unusual, since Mangala normally rides a goat. The composition is typical of early Pahari painting with the subject silhouetted against a coloured ground with flowers below and a sky above, but without any indication of space or spatial recession.  Although acquired as from Chamba, subsequent research by Goswamy and Fischer (1992, pp. 95-125) suggests Mankot as a more likely school and possibly from the hand of the artist they designate the ‘Master at the Court of Mankot’.   Our Mangala can be compared with that master’s image of Rama being worshipped by Hanuman in the Rietberg Museum (ibid., no. 52), while the tiger with its fearsome claws is close to that master’s tiger in Vasudeva crossing the Jumna with the infant Krishna in a painting now in Chandigarh (ibid., no. 43).

Rama and Laksmana are pinned by serpentine arrows.  By a Pahari artist from Bahu or Kulu, from the Shangri Ramayana, Style III, circa 1700-10.  186 by 290 mm; page 215 x 316 mm. Add.Or.5696, acquired 2010.

The Shangri Ramayana series is one of the most hotly disputed topics in Pahari painting.  A large part of this loose-leaf series is in the National Museum, New Delhi, but many paintings are also dispersed.  When it was first analysed by W.G. Archer (1973, pp. 325-29), he thought it was prepared at Kulu and discerned four separate styles between 1690 and 1710.  B.N. Goswamy and E. Fischer (1992, pp. 76-91) moved the first two styles to Bahu, an offshoot of Jammu, but this unfortunately left the last two styles in an artistic limbo, since they have absolutely nothing in common with either Bahu or Jammu paintings, and much further research is needed to resolve this.  Wherever it comes from, style III with its wonderfully human monkeys is one of the most exuberant and charming of all the Pahari styles.

Our page is from Book 6, the Yuddhakanda or Lankakanda (Book of Battles or Lanka), of the Ramayana, canto 49.  Ravana's terrifying magician son Indrajit, who has the power to make himself invisible, has successfully ensnared Rama and Laksmana in serpentine coils so that they cannot move and lie on the ground unconscious, their eyes rolled up. On the left stands the monkey king Sugriva who is seeking advice from his nephew Angada and the king of the bears Jambavan as to what to do.  All the other monkeys, including the blue crowned monkey general Nila, are terrified when they see Vibhisana, Ravana's brother, advancing on them with his club.  Vibhisana had previously abandoned his doomed brother and had come over to Rama's side, but the monkeys mistake him for the invisible Indrajit and run away in terror.

This particular artist has a peculiar trick of perspective.  The monkeys are not climbing up over each other in order to escape but are actually in a receding line:  other paintings by this artist show him resolving perspective issues of one person or monkey behind another in the same individual way.  The artist is trying to adjust his inherited style to include depth but he lacks awareness of how to do it.

This archaic style continued in use in several Pahari court styles until late in the 18^th century, even after other styles were becoming increasingly influenced by Mughal painting from the court of Muhammad Shah (reg. 1719-48).

Raja Shamsher Sen of Mandi (reg. 1727-81) enjoying a smoke.  By a Mandi artist, 1760-70.  180 by 207 mm.  Add.Or.5600, acquired 2006.  From the collection of W.G. and Mildred Archer (1967, no. 30).

Raja Shamsher Sen of Mandi is kneeling on a terrace and much enjoying the fragrant smoke from a hookah.  The artist shows the tobacco smoke rising from the hookah’s burning pan before some is drawn down and through the rosewater in the body of the hookah and then emerging from the raja’s mouth.  He is accompanied by a young attendant waving a white cloth (one of the insignia of royalty) and by another tending the hookah, both wearing the long dreadlocks fashionable at the time among young men.  Portraits of rulers sitting on terraces had by this time become standard throughout the various schools of Indian painting, but in Mandi no concession is made to depicting space even though the terrace is now separated from the plain ground beyond.  Shamsher Sen, who inherited the throne from his grandfather, the formidable Sidh Sen at the age of five, was by all accounts a fairly weak and superstitious character and his numerous portraits suggest this.

Raja Ranjit Singh of Suket (reg.1762-1791) with his younger brother Kishan Singh.  By a Kangra artist, c. 1780.  224 by 165 mm.  Add.Or.5601, acquired 2006.   From the collection of W.G. and Mildred Archer (Archer 1973, vol. 1, p. 283, vol. 2, p. 197)

Court artists in Kangra were commissioned to produce a large series of portraits of neighbouring rulers from early in the reign of Sansar Chand (reg. 1775-1823) (Archer 1973, vol. 2, pp. 196-97).  In this portrait, set within a jharoka or window frame, Ranjit Singh reclines against a red bolster and smokes from his hookah.  On the left, his brother Kishan Singh is pictured facing Ranjit Singh.  His figure is much larger in proportion to his brother, no doubt because Kishan Singh was in fact Sansar Chand’s father-in-law.   On the right, an attendant waves a morchhal (peacock-feather fan, another of the insignia of royalty) with his right hand and holds the hilt of a wrapped-up sword in his left.  Although Kangra painting has become synonymous with a naturalistic, elegant and gracious style (see below), this was not the case with its portraiture which even later than this preserved an archaic and hieratic approach.

The marriage ceremony of Vasudeva and Devaki.  Illustration to the Bhagavata Purana.  By a Guler artist at Basohli, possibly Fattu son of Manaku, c. 1760.  227 by 334 mm; page 298 by 403 mm.  Add.Or.1811, acquired 1960 (Falk and Archer 1981, no, 543).

Signs of change first became apparent in Pahari painting in 1730, with the Guler artist Manaku’s Gita Govinda (Lahore and Chandigarh Museums, and dispersed).  He and his brother Nainsukh were both exposed to contemporary Mughal painting and in their different ways in the period 1730-60 introduced stylistic change into the painting of the hills, softening the jagged outlines, moderating the fierce colours, and giving solidity to their figures and depth to their compositions.  The two brothers had six sons between them.  All of them followed the family profession and introduced the new style to the various court studios of the hills. 

A page from what is now called the large Guler-Basohli Bhagavata Purana was acquired in 1960, when 200 or so individual paintings from the set from the collection of Mrs F.C. Smith were dispersed at auction.  This dispersed series of the Bhagavata Purana is one of the most important achievements of Pahari artists and the most influential in determining the development of Pahari painting at Guler and Kangra in the illustration of poetical Vaishnava texts.  It is also among the most controversial, although most authorities agree that Manaku’s son Fattu had a hand in it.

Pahari artists introduced depth into their compositions by raising the viewpoint, so that figures could be depicted one behind the other in some kind of believable spatial setting.  That this did not come naturally to them is suggested by the somewhat awkward wall zigzagging across the picture plane, a feature of quite a few paintings from this series.  Within the high walls of the palace at Mathura and under the night sky, Vasudeva and Devaki, the future parents of Krishna, are married.  They wear the traditional marriage costumes, while the priests facing them add ghee to the sacred fire and chant the Vedic mantras.  They sit side by side beneath a canopy decorated with parakeets. Household ladies and other priests are gathered on either side, while women at the palace windows above look down on the scene or chatter among themselves.

Radha makes love to Krishna in a grove.  An illustration to the Rasikapriya of Keshav Das.  Kangra, c. 1820.  Attributed to Purkhu and his school.  248 by151 mm; page 272 by 177 mm.  Add.Or.26, acquired 1955 (Falk and Archer 1981, no. 548).

Some of the great masterpieces of the new style were produced for Sansar Chand of Kangra early in his reign, including now dispersed series of the Gita Govinda, Bhagavata Purana and Ramayana.  Sansar Chand at the age of 20 in 1786 set out to make himself the preeminent chief in the hills and was indeed so by 1806, with most of the rajas paying him tribute.  In that year occurred the disastrous Gurkha invasions from Nepal when Kangra was overrun and Sansar Chand was forced to appeal to Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Punjab for assistance.  It was granted and the Gurkhas were expelled by 1809, but at the price of Sansar Chand having from then on to release the other states from paying tribute and indeed having to pay tribute himself to the Lahore court. 

Sansar Chand from then on lived more in retirement, but still commissioning paintings.  The first flush of brilliance in the style had passed and was replaced by a more mannered but still lyrical elegance.   Typical of this period is a very large dispersed series from around 1820 illustrating the Hindi text on poetics, the Rasikapriya, by Keshav Das.  This work classifies the various types of heroines and their lovers and proved irresistible to patrons and artists alike as a way of combining sringara rasa, the erotic sentiment of classical poetic theory, with the bhakti movement of personal devotion to Krishna, since the lover in the pictures was often identified with Krishna himself.  Goswamy and Fischer now attribute the series to the artist Purkhu with assistants (2011).

The painting illustrates the verse 1.20, prachanna-samyoga-sringara (‘hidden love in union’):

‘One day Vrishabhanu’s daughter [Radha] and Murari [Krishna] decided to hide in the forest and engage in reverse love  play.  Fully immersed in each other and groaning with pleasure they were fully enjoying each other.  During the amorous acitivity Radha’ sapphire-studded pendant tied round her neck with a black thread was moving and it seemed as Surya and Saturn were swinging’ (translated Harsha Dehejia, 2013).

In our painting in a blossoming grove by a pool, Radha, wearing a flowing pink gown, makes love to Krishna who dressed in saffron lies beneath her.   Sansar Chand was visited in 1820 by the traveller William Moorcroft whose manuscript journals and letters are in the British Library and quoted extensively by Archer (1973) for his assessment of Sansar Chand and his patronage of artists:  ‘He is fond of drawing, keeps several artists who execute the minute parts with great fidelity but are almost wholly ignorant of perspective.  His collection of drawings is very great … Many subjects from the Mahabharut are given in details, some of which for decency’s sake might have been spared, yet there were few of the latter description’ (MSS Eur D241, f. 67, quoted Archer 1973, vol. 1, pp. 262-63).

Further reading:

Archer, Mildred, Indian Miniatures and Folk Painting from the Collection of Mildred and W.G. Archer, London, 1967

Archer, W.G., Indian Painting from the Punjab Hills, London, 1973

Dehejia, Harsha V., Rasikapriya: Ritikavya of Keshavdas in Ateliers of Love, DK Printworld, New Delhi, 2013

Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1981

Goswamy, B.N., and Fischer, E., Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India, Delhi, 1992

Goswamy, B.N., and Fischer, E., ‘Purkhu of Kangra’ in Beach, M.C., Fischer, E., and Goswamy, B.N., Masters of Indian Painting, Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 2011, pp. 719-32

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