Information about Rajput Paintings in Rajasthan

In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was an extraordinary flowering of artistic expression at the courts of Rajasthan. An intense revival of Hindu devotionals brought about a vital link between poetry and drama, and painting, creating vivid pictorial narratives which were inspired by the literature and the dramas of the time.

Rajasthan, or "Rajputana", included 20 feudal states in the heart of northern India. In a small tract that was 800 km (500 miles) long and 700 km (450 miles) wide, seven states contributed significantly to the impassioned fervour of court painting: Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Marwar, Bikaner, Jaipur and Kishangarh. Each of these courts produced a distinctive idiom, influenced of course by the royal patrons who commissioned these paintings, but also by the environment: by the undulating countryside, by the hills and shrubs, the deserts and forts and gardens in which this art form was nurtured. 

Forest paper: Paper was introduced into India in the 14th century. It was used initially only in business transactions and trade. Prior to this, the manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries, preserved to the present day in the Jain bhandars (libraries) of Gujarat and Rajasthan, were on horizontal strips of palm leaf. They were inscribed with a stylus pen and adorned with tiny miniatures. The value of these early manuscripts is that they have inscriptions giving dates and the provenance; but their style remains unchanged through the centuries — seen in the Kalpa Sutra and the Balagopala Stuti texts. Even when paper had replaced palm leaf, the horizontal format continued to be used in Rajput paintings of the Bhagavata Purana and the Gita Govinda in the 16th century. 

The illustration of Hindu religious narrative received fresh impetus with the revival of Vaishnava literature. The Ramayana was translated into the local languages, becoming a popular source for oral recitations and stage performances. In the Malwa set of paintings dating from the 17th century, the geographical location for the invasion of Lanka is mapped out with reference to the stage. The heroes Rama and Lakshmana are profiled on one side of the Indian Ocean, with the army of monkeys leaping across the great blue chasm. On the other side, Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka and the abducted Sita are depicted in two separate pavilions. The use of gestures and animated movement, and vivid colours to distinguish the characters, are essential to the dramatic narrative. 

Dance dramas (natakas) provided a vital source of entertainment in medieval India. It was Krishna who captivated the minds and hearts of the people. Krishna, the butter thief and the miracle child, the darling of the milkmaids (gopis) and the irresistible lover, became the embodiment of romantic love. Earlier texts such as the Hari Vamsa and the Vishnu Purana had explored his childhood adventures. Later texts, such as the Bhagavata Purana and the Gita Govinda, dramatise his romance with the gopis and with Radha. These texts are still revered today, read out aloud in gatherings and enacted during annual festivals, such as on the extremely popular Krishna Lila and Janmashtami. Also Visit – Jaisalmer tour packages from Delhi India with Swan Tours at economical.

The vibrant set of paintings of the Bhagavata Purana, for instance, are each "staged" in domed pavilions, with the starched contours of costumes, the use of intense dark eyes and rehearsed gestures for communication. Whether seated or standing, each figure is isolated against a red, blue or, sometimes, yellow background that acts as a brilliant back-drop or stage "curtain". The movement of figures is invariably in single file, laterally in one direction, as though on stage moving both through space and time. 

Such paintings provide evidence for a miniature style that flourished in the first half of the 16th century, before the Mughal studio of painters was formed. It has been suggested that the Mughal emperor Akbar recruited much of the talent for his new and dynamic school of painting from other court centres that existed in central India: in Gwalior, Jaunpur, Mandu, Gujarat, and in Chittaurgarh in Rajasthan. This is upheld not only by the overwhelming majority of Hindu artists at the Mughal court, but also by the eclectic vigour and different idioms in early Mughal paintings of the Tuti Nama and Hamza Nama. 

Yet, by what seems a curious paradox, some of the earliest surviving manuscripts of Rajasthan have been worked upon by Muslim artists. The first definitive proof of painting in Mewar, is in a Ragamala set of paintings that are dated to the year 1605, by a painter called Nasir-ud-din. Again, the spectacular and recent discovery of another Ragainala set in the Bundi style, but painted at Chunar in Uttar Pradesh, states clearly that it was painted by three artists who had learnt their trade with the Persian masters of the Mughal atelier. Yet this set, which is dated to 1591, belongs to the formative style of Bundi, and is already imbued with the vibrant colours and lyricism of Rajput painting. 

In the 17th century, all of North India lay under the rule of the Mughal emperors. It was natural that the exuberant burst of Mughal art would affect and influence the art of the Rajput courts. It seems that a seminal school of painting had already developed at Chittaurgarh in the 16th century. A set of the Cita Govinda may belong here, depicting the idealized lovers in intense communication, set against flat expanses of colour with a schematic treatment of trees and flowers. During the interim 30 years of warfare and stubborn defiance of Mughal authority, it is interesting to note that the Mewar Rajputs employed Muslim painters in their service, who in all probability came from the Mughal court. This subtle inter actic brings a new pitch to the miniatures.

Pure passion: From the start, Rajput painting is unmistakably different from the refined court art and book illustrations of the Mughals. It developed its own set of priorities, its own sensibility. In the early paintings from Mewar and Bundi, the colours are inflamed with pure passion, and used undiluted. In Ragini Bhairavi, a 16th-cen-tury Bundi miniature illustrated here, a brutal, brilliant red serves as the background to a captivated woman seated before the Shiva linga, performing a puja. White flower garlands draped on the linga, a triangular corner of the blue sky, the peacock on the roof, and the intensely black eyes and hair of the woman are the only accents here. The use of bold colours brings a savage intensity to these early paintings. A remarkable affinity is shared between the woman profiled and the dark peacock above, as though they indulge in the same ecstatic response to life. These early paintings are infused with an emotion that demands a response, and which shocks almost as much as it elevates the viewer to a sense of religiosity. The atmosphere is one that is "not so much mystic as almost violently vital". 

Ragamala paintings  seem to have been the preserve and privilege of the Rajputs in North India. In the second half of the 16th century, the songs of Mirabai were sung at the Rajput courts in a surge of religious awakening. At Orcha the Rasikapriya of Keshava Das had just been composed in 1594, and soon after was set to pictorial illustrations in Mewar. In the early 17th century, the hundred verses of the poet Amaru, the/Imam Sataka, was also set to pictures and poems of the Malwa school, in a heightened exaltation of the heroine. The depiction of the nayika (lover), in her different moods and situations, becomes the obsession in both poems and visual imagery. As a concept, raga lends credibility to the translation of sound into image. Derived from the Sanskrit root ranja, to colour, raga literally means "colouring." With reference to music, it implies some means being used to "colour" or influence the mind with a definitive emotive response, to inflame it with a certain passion. Since music then is coloured and tinged with specific overtones, how appropriate to introduce colour, form and visual aids to enhance the expression of  a mood, or a time of day, or a season. It is wise not to take the correspondence between the ragas and paintings too literally, they are meant more as an evocation than a scientific description of the music. 

Every detail, from the mention of sandal paste or musk or camphor, or ashes smeared on the body, to the leaves quivering with excitement and dewdrops glistening on the lotus, to the sound of parrots in the forest, is used to arouse our sensations. It is the physical summoning that awakens us to the sound, smell and colour, and which contributes to the essential vitality of these paintings. Some of them, at least those that are exquisitely finished, remain as images in the mind when the music has died away. 

A young lissom woman, her body smeared with a paste of saffron and camphor, is shown wandering through the forest with her vina, followed by deer who seem infatuated with her, as might be described in a verse placed above the picture. This is Ragini Todi, which is said to embody the anguish of vipralabdha, of being separated from her lover. 

Quite a remarkable number of raginis portray the nayika as practicing tapas, leading a remote and austere life. Among them is Ragini Bangali, where the subject has retreated from the world to assuage her ardour by focusing her mind and heart on Lord Shiva. An unusual origin is found for Asavari Ragini, also known as Ragini Ahiri, which suggests a connection with the Ahirs, the cowherd nomads living in the hills. Invariably the nayika is seated upon a rock, in a skirt of leaves, her skin gleaming in dark blue to suggest her Adivasi origins. Summoned by the music of the shehnai, the inscription says, snakes desert their sandal trees and swarm up to the rocks to coil at her feet; white cranes by the water listen, enchanted, and the forest is vibrant with the sound and colour of birds. In some depictions, she herself plays the shehnai (oboe). 

In literature and painting, there is a sensuous delight in the charms of nature: in the colours of the sky, of the rivers in space, of animals responding to the change of seasons. An entire body of literature developed on the seasons, beginning with the classic poem by Kalidasa of the Ritusamhara. The depiction of each month in poems and paintings is known as the Baramasa. In the month of Magha (January—February), the poet Keshava says, forests and gardens echo with the cries of the peacock, pigeon and koel. Bees hum around. The air is scented with musk, camphor and sandal. The sounds of the pakhavaj (barrel drum) and other musical instruments are heard. All are celebrating the advent of spring. "If you love me," the beloved en-treats her lover, "do not leave me in this month of Magha".

The theme of romantic love is celebrated in a 12th-century poem by the poet Jayadeva, who singles out Radha for the first time as the heroine. In his Gita Govinda, the dramatis personae are Krishna, Radha and the dutika or messenger, who serves as their confidante. The meetings of these lovers in a secret grove, the anguish of their estrangements and reunion, the different phases of Radha pining for Krishna are described in successive cantos. In these verses Krishna grows to become more than a lover or a mere hero; he becomes the personification of love itself. 

In the devotional literature that followed, romantic love was conceived as an exalted experience. Jayadeva's poem received instant recognition, and inspired a wide body of love poems. In the west, Bilvamangala composed a genealogy on the child Krishna, known as the Balagopala Stuti. In Bengal in the 15th century, the poets Vidyapati and Chandidasa wrote poems in which the poet indentified himself wholly with the disorders of the mind, the sensations and the passions experienced by the lovers. In Mewar state, the princess Mirabai composed ecstatic songs for her patron deity, Krishna, in the form of Giri Govardhana. The Bhakti movement, initiated in Rajasthan by Shri Vallabhacharya, established a cult centre, and inspired his disciples such as Sur Das and Krishna Das. 

Krishna, the cowherd boy or Gokula, emerges from the forests of Vrindavan to lead home the cows during a golden dusk. The haunting melodies of his flute fill the village girls with longing, for they recognize it to be the call to love. On the autumn nights they steal into the forest where Krishna stands before them, wearing a crown of peacock feathers and a yellow dhoti, his blue-black skin shimmering in the moonlight. Using his powers of delusion, he provides each girl with a semblance of himself, and they dance as the moon rises, saturating the forest. 

The love play of Krishna and the gopis, known as the Krishna Lila, becomes one of the enduring elements of village life. In Vaishnava experience, the flute is the call of God, causing the souls of men and women to give up their worldly attachments and to gather to adore him. In one such incident he steals up and carries away the clothes of the gopis as they bathe in the river Yamuna, and then he sits on the Kadamaba tree, enticin them to come out of the water naked. The next intimate moment of passion between the lover and his beloved is ecstatic. 

In pictures illustrating texts such as the Gita Govinda, the artist employed poetic symbols — lotuses swaying in a stream, trees bursting into bloom—to suggest the intimate passion of the lovers. The movement of clouds, of rain, of lightning, of rivers, were each charged with implicit meaning. In literature, they sometimes served as a catalyst bringing lovers together. 

There seems to have been a continuous exodus of artists from the Mughal court, and also from the Deccan, to feed the demands of North India. When Emperor Aurangzeb determined upon a return to Islamic orthodoxy in the 1660s, the artists of the Mughal court were set free to join and influence other centres of court painting. The impact of Mughal artists is keenly felt in Bikaner painting, which seems to assemble the best of both idioms. Delicate pages of a Devi Mahatinya are suffused with subtle tones of muted greens and greys rarely found in other Rajput painting, with a pink demon who defies the usual iconography and bran-dishes instead a double-barrelled musket. In the royal portrait of Shri Karan Singh of Bikaner, the drawing is tinted with pink and green wash, and illuminated with pearl strands — achieving the formal elegance typical of portraits from the reign of Shah Jahan. 

A new genre of painting developed in the 18th century to depict the pastimes, amusements and romantic ideals of Rajput court life. This includes a large number of portraits in durbar, equestrian studies of rulers, and hunting scenes, especially from the smaller states and thikanas. For instance, a magnificent page depicting Raja Umed Singh of Udaipur enjoying a dance performance, inscribed with the names of two courtiers and of the dancer, in a dynamic rhythm that is quite different from the frozen assemblies in depictions of later durbars. 

The Rajput rulers are now depicted in different ceremonies of state, and religious festivals. Women out on a hunting expedition shoot at tigers, while the sky is stained the hot orange of monsoon sunsets, and birds raise a clamour at sundown. Even when the women are shown idling away their time on a terrace, beside a game of chaupad, the subtle curve of the horizon and the silver moon cupped into the sky betray their secret yearnings. 

Courtly love: The most eloquent expression of Rajput chivalry is to be found in paintings from the state of Kishangarh. In this small state that was founded in 1609, the subjects include hunting scenes and portraits, but they also explore most explicitly the scope of courtly love. The delicate refinements and technique derive from an appreciation of the Mughal style at Delhi and at Avadh; yet the heightened sense of lyricism owes much to the sensibilities and influence of the ruler, Savant Singh. He was not only an accomplished poet, but also a religious devotee, writing poems under the name of Nagari Das, to revive once again the romance of Krishna, with a personal identification. His own romance with the singer and poet, Bani Thani, served to strengthen and to generate a new genre of courtly love. From 1740 to 1756 he withdrew to live in Vrindavan, in adoration of Krishna; after which he abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Sardar Singh.

During the 14 years that followed, a small group of paintings were conceived that were large in size, but exquisite in their detailing and finish. With just a few exceptions, they celebrate the romantic encounter between Radha and Krishna. The setting here may be deep in the woods, but the lovers possess the elegance of a prince and princess. Figures are reduced to miniature scale, set against the vast expanse of a lake or against a carpet of towering trees — to suggest perhaps the sense of eternity that encompasses them.

The final gesture of courtly love is conveyed in a painting where, amidst their many attendants, Radha and Krishna are enthroned, against the far distant mirage of marble palaces. Male followers play upon the flute, while a female attendant offers pan. In Rajput etiquette, the offering of the betel leaf is a matter of social form; but the offering of pan by Radha to Krishna becomes a token of her deep adoration. So Krishna becomes immortalized in poetry and in painting, as the prince and the ideal lover. 

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