The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry Part 9

I felt stars shooting around me.

The sky fell with my dress Leaving my ravished b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

I was rocking like the earth.

In my storming breath I could hear my ankle-bells, Sounding like bees.

Drowned in the last-waters of dissolution I knew that this was not the end.

Says Vidyapati: How can I possibly believe such nonsense?

(Vidyapati)

[Footnote 60: Plate 29.]

[Footnote 61: Plate 35.]

[Footnote 62: Note 20.]

[Footnote 63: Note 20.]

(iv) The Rasika Priya

It is a third development, however, which reveals the insistent attractions of Krishna the divine lover. From about the seventh century onwards Indian thinkers had been fascinated by the great variety of possible romantic experiences. Writers had cla.s.sified feminine beauty and codified the different situations which might arise in the course of a romance. A woman, for example, would be catalogued according as she was 'one's own, another's or anyone's' and whether she was young, adolescent or adult. Beauties with adult physiques were divided into unmarried and married, while cutting across such divisions was yet another based on the particular circ.u.mstances in which a woman might find herself. Such circ.u.mstances were normally eight in number--when her husband or lover was on the point of coming and she was ready to receive him; when she was parted from him and was filled with longing; when he was constant and she was thus enjoying the calm happiness of stable love; when, for the time being, she was estranged due to some quarrel or tiff; when she had been deceived; when she had gone to meet her lover but had waited in vain, thereby being jilted; when her husband or lover had gone abroad and she was faced with days of lonely waiting; and finally, when she had left the house and gone to meet him. Ladies in situations such as these were known as _nayikas_ and the text embodying the standard cla.s.sification was the Sanskrit treatise, the _Bharatiya Natya Sastra_. A similar a.n.a.lysis was made of men--lovers or _nayakas_ being sometimes divided into fourteen different types.

Until the fourteenth century, such writings were studies in erotics rather than in literature--the actual situations rather than their literary treatment being the authors' prime concern. During the fourteenth century, however, questions of literary taste began to be discussed and there arose a new type of Sanskrit treatise, showing how different kinds of lover should be treated in poetry and ill.u.s.trating the correct att.i.tudes by carefully chosen verses. In all these writings the standard of reference was human pa.s.sion. The lovers of poetry might bear only a slight relation to lovers in real life. Many of the situations envisaged might rarely, if ever, occur. It was sufficient that granted some favourable accident, some chance suspension of normal circ.u.mstances, lovers could be imagined as acting in these special ways.

It is out of this critical literature that our new development springs. As vernacular languages were used for poetry, problems of Hindi composition began to dwarf those of Sanskrit. It was necessary to discuss how best to treat each _nayika_ and _nayaka_ not only in Sanskrit but in Hindi poetry also, and to meet this situation Keshav Das, the poet of Orchha in Bundelkhand, produced in 1591 his _Rasika Priya_. Here all the standard situations were once again examined, _nayikas_ and _nayakas_ were newly distinguished and verses ill.u.s.trating their appropriate treatments were systematically included. The book differed, however, in two important ways from any of its predecessors. It was written in Hindi, Keshav Das himself supplying both poems and commentary and what was even more significant, the _nayaka_ or lover was portrayed not as any ordinary well-bred young man but as Krishna himself.[64] As a girl waits at the tryst it is not for an ordinary lover but for Krishna that Keshav Das depicts her as longing.

'Is he detained by work? Is he loath to leave his friends? Has he had a quarrel? Is his body uneasy? Is he afraid when he sees the rainy dark? O Krishna, Giver of Bliss, why do you not come?'[65]

As a girl waits by her bed looking out through her door, it is the prospect of Krishna's arrival--not of an ordinary lover's--that makes her happy.

'As she runs, her blue dress hides her limbs. She hears the wind ruffling the trees and the birds s.h.i.+fting in the night. She thinks it must be he.

How she longs for love, watching for Krishna like a bird in a cage.'

When the lover arrives at dawn, having failed to come in the night, the girl (another _nayika_, 'one who has been deceived') upbraids Krishna for wandering about like a crow, picking up worthless grains of rice, wasting his hours in bad company and ruining houses by squatting in them like an owl.

Similarly when a married girl sits longing for her husband's return, her companion comments not on an ordinary husband's conduct but on that of Krishna. 'He said he would not be long. "I shall be back," he said, "as soon as I have had my meal." But now it is hours since he went. Why does he sit beside them and no one urge him to go? Does he know that her eyes are wet with tears, that she is crying her heart out because he does not come?'

Krishna, in fact, is here regarded as resuming in himself all possible romantic experiences. He is no longer merely the cowherd lover or the hero prince, the central figure of a sacred narrative. Neither is he merely or only the lover of Radha. He is deemed to know love from every angle and thus to sanctify all modes of pa.s.sionate behaviour. He is love itself.

Such a development concludes the varied phases through which the character of Krishna has pa.s.sed. The cowherd lover supersedes the hero prince. Radha becomes all in all, yet touches of Krishna's princely majesty remain throughout. Even as a cowherd Krishna shows an elegance and poise which betrays his different origin. And in the _Rasika Priya_ it is once again his courtly aura which determines his new role. A blend of prince and cowherd, Krishna ousts from poetry the courtly lovers who previously had seemed the acme of romance. Adoration of G.o.d acquires the grace and charm of courtly loving, pa.s.sionate sensuality all the refinement and n.o.bility of a spiritual religion. It is out of all these varied texts that the Krishna of Indian painting now emerges.

[Footnote 64: Plate 28.]

[Footnote 65: Note 21.]

VI

THE KRISHNA OF PAINTING

Indian pictures of Krishna confront us with a series of difficult problems. The most exalted expressions of the theme are mainly from Kangra, a large Hindu state within the Punjab Hills.[66] It was here that Krishna, the cowherd lover, was most fully celebrated. Pictures were produced in large numbers and the Kangra style with its delicate refinement exactly mirrored the enraptured poetry of the later cult. This painting was due entirely to a particular Kangra ruler, Raja Sansar Chand (1775-1823)--his delight in painting causing him to spare no cost in re-creating the Krishna idyll in exquisite terms. Elsewhere, however, conditions varied. At the end of the sixteenth century, it was not a Hindu but a Muslim ruler who commissioned the greatest ill.u.s.trations of the story. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hindu patrons were the rule but in certain states it was junior members of the ruling family rather than the Raja himself who wors.h.i.+pped Krishna. Sometimes it was not the ruling family but members of the merchant community who sponsored the artists and, occasionally, it was even a pious lady or devout princess who served as patron. Such differences of stimulus had vital effects and, as a consequence, while the cult of Krishna came increasingly to enthrall the northern half of India, its expression in art was the reverse of neat and orderly. Where a patron was so imbued with love for Krishna that adoration of the cowherd lover preceded all, the intensity of his feeling itself evoked a new style. There then resulted the Indian equivalent of pictures by El Greco, Grunewald or Altdorfer--paintings in which the artist's own religious emotions were the direct occasion of a new manner. In other cases, the patron might adhere to Krishna, pay him nominal respect or take a moderate pleasure in his story but not evince a burning enthusiasm. In such cases, paintings of Krishna would still be produced but the style would merely repeat existing conventions. The pictures which resulted would then resemble German paintings of the Danube or Cologne schools--pictures in which the artist applied an already mature style to a religious theme but did not originate a fresh mode of expression. Whether the greatest art resulted from the first or second method was problematical for the outcome depended as much on the nature of the styles as on the artist's powers. In considering Indian pictures of Krishna, then, we must be prepared for sudden fluctuations in expression and abrupt differences of style and quality. Adoration of Krishna was to prove one of the most vital elements in village and courtly life. It was to capture the imagination of Rajput princes and to lead to some of the most intimate revelations of the Indian mind. Yet in art its expression was to hover between the crude and the sensitive, the savage and the exquisite. It was to stimulate some of the most delicate Indian pictures ever painted and, at the same time, some of the most forceful.

The first pictures of Krishna to be painted in India fall within this second category. In about 1450, one version of the _Gita Govinda_ and two of the _Balagopala Stuti_ were produced in Western India.[67] They were doubtless made for middle-cla.s.s patrons and were executed in Western India for one important reason. Dwarka, the scene of Krishna's life as a prince, and Prabhasa, the scene of the final slaughter, were both in Western India. Both had already become centres of pilgrimage and although Jayadeva had written his great poem far to the East, on the other side of India, pilgrims had brought copies with them while journeying from Bengal on visits to the sites. The _Gita Govinda_ of Jayadeva had become in fact as much a Western Indian text as the _Balagopala Stuti_ of Bilvamangala. With ma.n.u.script ill.u.s.trations being already produced in Western India--but not, so far as we know, elsewhere--it was not unnatural that the first ill.u.s.trated versions of these poems should be painted here. And it is these circ.u.mstances which determined their style. Until the fifteenth century the chief ma.n.u.scripts ill.u.s.trated in Western India were Jain scriptures commissioned by members of the merchant community. Jainism had originated in the sixth century B.C. as a parallel movement to Buddhism.

It had proved more accommodating to Hinduism, and when Buddhism had collapsed in Western India in the ninth century A.D., Jainism had continued as a local variant of Hinduism proper. Jain ma.n.u.scripts had at first consisted of long rectangular strips made of palm-leaves on which the scriptures were written in heavy black letters. Each slip was roughly three inches wide and ten long and into the text had been inserted lean diagrammatic paintings either portraying Mahavira, the founder of the cult, or ill.u.s.trating episodes in his earthly career.

About 1400, palm-leaf was superseded by paper and from then onwards ma.n.u.scripts were given slightly larger pages. Owing partly to their a.s.sociation with the same religious order and partly to their constant duplication, Jain ma.n.u.scripts had early conformed to a certain rigid type.

The painting was marked by lean and wiry outlines, brilliant red and blue and above all by an air of savage ferocity expressed through the idiom of faces shown three-quarter view with the farther eye detached and projecting into s.p.a.ce. This style was exercised almost exclusively on Jain subjects and in the year 1400 it was the main style of painting in Western India and Raj as than.

During the fifteenth century, this exclusive character gradually weakened.

There arose the idea that besides Jain scriptures, secular poetry might also be ill.u.s.trated and along with the growing devotion to Krishna as G.o.d came the demand for ill.u.s.trated versions of Krishna texts. The three texts we have just mentioned are due to this tendency. All three are ill.u.s.trated in the prevailing Jain style with its spiky angular idioms and all three have the same somewhat sinister air of barbarous frenzy. At the same time, all disclose a partial loosening of the rigid wiry convention, a more boisterous rhythm and a slightly softer treatment of trees and animals; and, although no very close correlation is possible, the theme itself may well have helped to precipitate these important changes.

Between 1450 and 1575, Western Indian painting continued to focus on Jain themes, adulterated to only a very slight extent by subjects drawn from poetry. It is possible that the Krishna story was also ill.u.s.trated, but no examples have survived; and it is not until the very end of the sixteenth century that the Krishna theme again appears in painting and then in two distinct forms. The first is represented by a group of three ma.n.u.scripts--two of them dated respectively 1598[68] and 1610[69] and consisting of the tenth book of the _Bhagavata Purana_, the third being yet another ill.u.s.tration of the _Gita Govinda[70]_. All three sets of ill.u.s.trations are in a closely similar style--a style which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these ma.n.u.scripts were made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of painting and can hardly have been commissioned by a prince or merchant of much aesthetic sensibility. They prove, however, that a demand for ill.u.s.trated versions of the Krishna story was persisting and suggest that even prosperous traders may perhaps have acted as patrons.

The second type is obviously the product of far more sophisticated influences. It is once again a copy of the _Gita Govinda_ and was probably executed in about 1590 in or near Jaunpur in Eastern India. As early as 1465, a ma.n.u.script of the leading Jain scripture, the _Kalpasutra_, had been executed at Jaunpur for a wealthy merchant.[71] Its style was basically Western Indian, yet being executed in an area so far to the east, it also possessed certain novelties of manner. The heads were more squarely shaped, the eyes larger in proportion to the face, the ladies'

drapery fanning out in great angular swirls. The bodies' contours were also delineated with exquisitely sharp precision. The court at the time was that of Hussain Shah, a member of the marauding Muslim dynasties which since the twelfth century had enveloped Northern India; and it is possibly due to persistent Muslim influence that painting revived in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. Ill.u.s.trated versions of pa.s.sionate love poetry were executed[72] and as part of the same vogue for poetic romance, the _Gita Govinda_ may once again have been ill.u.s.trated.[73] Between the style of these later pictures and that of the Jain text of 1465, there are such clear affinities that the same local tradition is obviously responsible. Yet the new group of paintings has a distinctive elegance all its own. As in the previous group, the detached projecting eye has gone.

Each situation is treated with a slas.h.i.+ng boldness. There is no longer a sense of cramping detail and the flat red backgrounds of Western Indian painting infuse the settings with hot pa.s.sion. But it is the treatment of the feminine form which charges the pictures with sophisticated charm. The large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the sweeping dip in the back, the proud curve of the haunches, the agitated jutting-out of the skirts, all these convey an air of vivid sensual charm. That Radha and Krishna should be portrayed in so civilized a manner is evidence of the power which the Krishna story had come to exercise on courtly minds. Krishna is portrayed not as G.o.d but as the most elegant of lovers, Radha and the cowgirls as the very embodiment of fas.h.i.+onable women.

Jaunpur painting does not seem to have survived the sixteenth century and for our next ill.u.s.trations of the theme, we must turn to the school of painting fostered by the Mughals. During the sixteenth century at least three Muslim states other than Jaunpur itself had possessed schools of painting--Malwa in Central India and Bij.a.pur and Ahmadnagar in the Deccan.

Their styles can best be regarded as Indian offshoots of a Persian mode of painting which was current in the Persian province of s.h.i.+raz in about the year 1500. In this style, known as Turkman, the flat figures of previous Persian painting were set in landscapes of rich and glowing herbage, plants and trees being rendered with wild and primitive vigour. In each case the style was probably brought to India by Persian artists who communicated it to Indian painters or themselves adjusted it to local conditions. And it is this process which was repeated but on an altogether grander scale by the Muslim dynasty of the Mughals. Under the emperor Akbar (1556-1605), the Mughals absorbed the greater part of Northern India, concentrating in one imperial court more power and wealth than had probably been ama.s.sed at any previous time in India. Among Akbar's cultural inst.i.tutions was a great imperial library for which a colony of artists was employed in ill.u.s.trating ma.n.u.scripts in Persian. The founders of this colony were Persian and it is once again a local style of Persian painting which forms the starting point. This style is no longer the Turkman style of s.h.i.+raz but a later style--a local version of Safavid painting as current in Khurasan. With its lively and delicate naturalism it not only corresponded to certain predilections of the emperor Akbar himself, but seems also to have appealed to Indian artists recruited to the colony. Its representational finesse made it an ideal medium for transcribing the Indian scene and the appearance at the court of European miniatures, themselves highly naturalistic, stimulated this character still further. The result was the sudden rise in India, between 1570 and 1605, of a huge new school of painting, exquisitely representational in manner and committed to a new kind of Indian naturalism. Such a school, the creation of an alien Muslim dynasty, would at first sight seem unlikely to produce ill.u.s.trations of Hindu religion. Its main function was to ill.u.s.trate works of literature, science and contemporary history--a function which resulted in such grandiose productions as the _Akbarnama_ or Annals of Akbar, now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.[74]

None the less there are two ways in which Mughal painting, as developed under Akbar, contributed to the Krishna story. Akbar, although a Muslim by birth, was keenly interested in all religions and in his dealings with the Rajputs had shown himself markedly tolerant. He desired to minimise the hatred of Muslims for Hindus and believing it to arise from mutual ignorance, ordained that certain Hindu texts should be translated into Persian and thus rendered more accessible. The texts chosen were the two epics, the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_, and of these Persian abridgements were duly prepared. The abridgement of the _Mahabharata_, known as the _Razmnama_, was probably completed in 1588 but ill.u.s.trated copies, including the great folios now in the palace library at Jaipur, were probably not completed before 1595. As part of the project, its appendix, the _Harivansa_ was also summarized and a separate volume with fourteen ill.u.s.trations all concerned with Krishna is part of the great version now at Jaipur.[75] In these ill.u.s.trations, it is Krishna the prince who is chiefly shown, all the pictures ill.u.s.trating his career after he has left the cowherds. There is no attempt to stress his romantic qualities or to present him as a lover. He appears rather as the great fighter, the slayer of demons. Such a portrayal is what we might perhaps expect from a Mughal edition. None the less the paintings are remarkable interpretations, investing Krishna with an air of effortless composure, and exalting his princely grace. The style is notable for its use of smoothly flowing outlines and gentle shading, and although there is no direct connection, it is these characteristics which were later to be embodied in the Hindu art of the Punjab Hills.

Such interest by the Emperor may well have spurred Hindu members of the court to have other texts ill.u.s.trated for, ten to fifteen years later, in perhaps 1615, a ma.n.u.script of the _Gita Govinda_ was produced, its ill.u.s.trations possessing a certain fairy-like refinement.[76] Krishna in a flowing dhoti wanders in meadows gay with feathered trees while Radha and her confidante appear in Mughal garb. Romance is hardly evident for it is the scene itself with its rustic prettiness which is chiefly stressed. Yet the patron by whom this version was commissioned may well have felt that it was sensitively rendered and within its minor compa.s.s expressed to some extent the magical enchantment distilled by the verses. That the Emperor's stimulus survived his death is plain; for in about the year 1620, two ma.n.u.scripts of the _Bhagavata Purana_ appeared--both in a style of awkward crudity in which the idioms of Akbar's school of artists were consciously aped.[77] The ma.n.u.scripts in question are at Bikaner and it is possible that one or two inferior Mughal artists, deprived of work at the central court, travelled out to this northerly Rajput state, daring the desert, and there produced these vapid works. It is likely that in the early years of the seventeenth century, many areas of India possessed no artists whatsoever and if a Hindu ruler was to copy Mughal fas.h.i.+on, the only artists available to him might be those of an inferior rank. And although exact data are wanting, such circ.u.mstances may well explain another doc.u.ment of Krishna, the first ill.u.s.trated version of Keshav Das's _Rasika Priya_.[78] As we have seen, this poem was composed at Orchha in Bundelkhand in 1591, at a time when both poet and court were in close a.s.sociation with Akbar. Yet the version in question shows the same poverty-stricken manner with its crude aping of imperial idioms and utter lack of sensitive expression. There is no evidence that at this time Bundelkhand possessed its own school of painting and in consequence the most likely explanation is that yet another inferior artist trained in the early Mughal manner, migrated to the court and there produced this crude prosaic version. In none of these provincial Mughal pictures is there any feeling for Krishna as G.o.d or even as a character. The figures have a wooden doll-like stiffness, parodying by their evident jerkiness the exquisite emotions intended by the poet and we can only a.s.sume that impressed by the imperial example minor rulers or n.o.bles encouraged struggling pract.i.tioners but in an atmosphere far removed from that of the great emperor.

Such paintings in a broken-down Akbari manner characterize the period 1615 to 1630. From then onwards Mughal painting, as it developed under the emperor Shah Jahan, concentrated on more courtly themes. The early interest in dramatic action disappeared and the demand for costly ma.n.u.scripts, sumptuously ill.u.s.trated, withered up. Under Aurangzeb, tolerant understanding gave way to a vicious proselytism and it was only in remote centres such as Bikaner that later Mughal artists exercised their style on Krishna themes. It is significant that at Bikaner their leader was a Muslim, Ruknuddin, and that his chief work was a series of pictures ill.u.s.trating the _Rasika Priya_.[79] His figures have a shallow prettiness of manner, stamping them once again as products of a style which, in its earliest phases, was admirably suited to recording dramatic action but which had little relevance to either religion or romance. For these a more poetic and symbolic manner was necessary and such a style appeared in the city of Udaipur in the Rajput State of Mewar.

Painting at Udaipur is inseparably a.s.sociated with the influence of two great rulers--Rana Jagat Singh (1628-1652) and Rana Raj Singh (1652-1681) As early as 1605 pictures had been produced at the State's former capital, Chawand--the artist being a Muhammadan named Nasiruddin. His style was obviously quite independent of any Mughal influence and it is rather to the separate tradition of painting which had grown up in Malwa that we must look for its salient qualities--a tensely rhythmical line, a flamboyant use of strong emphatic colours, vigorous simplifications and boldly primitive idioms for plants and trees. It is this style which thirty or forty years later comes to luxuriant maturity in a series of ill.u.s.trations executed at Udaipur.[80] Although the artists responsible included a Muslim, Shahabaddin, and a Hindu, Manohar, it is the Krishna theme itself which seems to have evoked this marvellous efflorescence.

Rana Jagat Singh was clearly a devout wors.h.i.+pper whose faithful adhesion to Rajput standards found exhilarating compensations in Krishna's role as lover. Keshav Das's _Rasika Priya_ achieved the greatest popularity at his court--its blend of reverent devotion and ecstatic pa.s.sion fulfilling some of the deepest Rajput needs. Between the years 1645 and 1660 there accordingly occurred a systematic production not only of pictures ill.u.s.trating this great poetic text but of the various books in the _Bhagavata Purana_ most closely connected with Krishna's career. Krishna is shown as a Rajput princeling dressed in fas.h.i.+onable garb, threading his way among the cowgirls, pursuing his amorous inclinations and practising with artless guile the seductive graces of a courtly lover. Each picture has a pa.s.sionate intensity--its rich browns and reds, greens and blues endowing its characters with glowing fervour, while Krishna and the cowgirls, with their sharp robust forms and great intent eyes, display a brusque vitality and an eager rapturous vigour. A certain simplification of structure--each picture possessing one or more rectangular compartments--enhances this effect while the addition of swirling trees studded with flowers imbues each wild encounter with a surging vegetative rhythm. Krishna is no longer the tepid well-groomed youth of Mughal tradition, but a vigorous Rajput n.o.ble expressing with decorous vehemence all the violent longings denied expression by the Rajput moral code. Such pictures have a lyrical splendour, a certain wild elation quite distinct from previous Indian painting and we can only explain these new stylistic qualities by reference to the cult of Krishna himself. The realization that Krishna was adorable, that his practice of romantic love was a sublime revelation of G.o.dhead and that in his wors.h.i.+p lay release is the motive force behind these pictures and the result is a new style transcending in its rhythmical a.s.surance and glowing ardour all previous achievements.

Such an outburst of painting could hardly leave other areas unaffected and in the closing quarter of the seventeenth century, not only Bundi, the Rajput State immediately adjoining Udaipur to the east, but Malwa, the wild hilly area farther south east, witnessed a renaissance of painting.

At Bundi, the style was obviously a direct development from that of Udaipur itself--the idioms for human figures and faces as well as the glowing colours being clearly based on Udaipur originals. At the same time, a kind of sumptuous luxuriance, a predilection for greens and oranges in brilliant juxtaposition, a delight in natural profusion and the use of recessions, shading and round volumes give each picture a distinctive aura.[81] In Malwa, on the other hand, the earlier tradition seems to have undergone a new resuscitation. Following various wars in Middle India, the former Muslim kingdom had been divided into fiefs--some being awarded to Rajput n.o.bles of loyalty and valour. The result was yet another style of painting--comparable in certain ways to that of Bundi and Udaipur yet markedly original in its total effect. In place of tightly geometrical compositions, Malwa artists preferred a more fluid grouping, their straining luxuriant trees blending with swaying creepers to create a soft meandering rhythm and only the human figures, with their sharply cut veils and taut intense faces, expressing the prevailing cult of frenzied pa.s.sion.[82] Such schools of painting reflected the Rajput need for pa.s.sionate romance rather than any specially strong adhesion to Krishna, the divine lover. Although one copy of the _Rasika Priya_ and one of the _Bhagavata Purana_ were executed at both these centres, their chief subjects were the _ragas_ and _raginis_ (the thirty-six modes of Indian music) _nayakas_ and _nayikas_ (the ideal lovers) and _barahmasas_ (the twelve months) while in the case of Malwa, there was the added theme of Sanskrit love-poetry. Krishna the G.o.d was rarely celebrated and it was rather as 'the best of lovers' that he was sometimes introduced into pictures. In a Bundi series depicting the twelve months, courtly lovers are shown sitting in a balcony watching a series of rustic incidents proceeding below. The lover, however, is not an ordinary prince but Krishna himself, his blue skin and royal halo leaving no possible doubt as to his real ident.i.ty.[83] Similarly in paintings ill.u.s.trating the character and personality of musical modes, Krishna was often introduced as the perfect embodiment of pa.s.sionate loving. None of the poems accompanying the modes make any allusion to him. Indeed, their prime purpose is to woo the presiding genius of the melody and suggest the visual scene most likely to evoke its spirit. The musical mode, _Bhairava Raga_, for example, was actually a.s.sociated with Siva, yet because the character of the music suggested furious pa.s.sion the central figure of the lover dallying with a lady was depicted as Krishna.[84] In _Hindola Raga_, a mode connected with swinging, a similar result ensued. Swinging in Indian sentiment was normally a.s.sociated with the rains and these in turn evoked 'memory and desire.' The character of the music was therefore visualized as that of a young prince swinging in the rain--his very movements symbolizing the act of love. Since Krishna, however, was the perfect lover, nothing was easier than to portray _Hindola Raga_ as Krishna himself. _Hindola_ might be invoked in the poem, but it was Krishna who appeared seated on the swing.[85] An exactly similar process occurred in the case of _Megh Mallar Raga_. This was connected with the rainy season, yet because rain and storm were symbolic of s.e.x, _Megh Mallar_ was portrayed not as a separate figure, but as Krishna once again dancing in the rain with ladies accompanying him. Even feminine modes of music suffered the same kind of transformation. _Vasanta Ragini_, 'the music of springtime,' was normally apostrophized as a lovely lady, yet because springtime suggested lovers, she was shown in painting as if she were Krishna dancing with a vase of flowers, holding a wand in his hand or celebrating the spring fertility festival. The mode, _Pancham Ragini_, was also feminine in character and was conceived of as a beauty enjoying her lover's advances. The lady herself was portrayed, yet once again Krishna was introduced, this time as her lover. In all these cases the celebration of Krishna was incidental to the main theme and only in one instance--a Malwa _Rasika Priya_--is there a trace of undisguised adoration. In this lovely series,[86] Krishna's enchantment is perfectly suggested by the flowering trees which wave above him, the style acquiring an even more intense lyricism on account of its divine subject.

During the eighteenth century, painting in Rajasthan became increasingly secular, even artists of Udaipur devoting themselves almost exclusively to scenes of court life. The Ranas and the Mewar n.o.bility were depicted hunting in the local landscape, watching elephant fights or moving in procession. Similar fas.h.i.+ons prevailed in Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Bundi and Kotah. Only, in fact, in two Rajasthan States and then for only brief periods was there any major celebration of the Krishna theme. At Kishangarh, a small State midway between Ajmer and Jaipur, a series of intensely poetic paintings were produced between the years 1750 and 1760--the prime stimulus being the delight of Raja Sawant Singh in Krishna's romance.[87] Born in 1699, Sawant Singh had ascended the throne in 1748 and given all his time to three activities, the rapturous re-living of Krishna's romance with Radha, the composition of ecstatic poems and the daily wors.h.i.+p of Krishna as lover G.o.d. So great was his devotion that in 1757 he abandoned the throne and taking with him his favourite maid of honour, the beautiful poetess, Bani Thani, retired to Brindaban where he died in 1764. Sawant Singh's delight seems to have been shared by a local artist, Nihal Chand, for under the Raja's direction he produced a number of pictures in which Radha and Krishna sustained the leading roles. The pictures were mainly ill.u.s.trations of Sawant Singh's own poems--the lovers being portrayed at moments of blissful wonder, drifting on a lake in a scarlet boat, watching fireworks cascading down the sky or gently dallying in a marble pavilion.

Here is Love's enchanted zone Here Time and the Firmament stand still Here the Bride and Bridegroom Never can grow old.

Here the fountains never cease to play And the night is ever young.[88]

Nihal Chand's style was eminently fitted to express this mood of sensitive adoration. Originally trained in the later Mughal style, he was able to render appearances with exquisite delicacy but was also acutely aware of rhythmical elegance. And it is this which constantly characterized his work, his greatest achievement being the creation of a local manner for portraying Radha and Krishna.[89] Radha was endowed with great arched eyebrows and long eyes--the end of the eye being tilted so as to join the downward sweeping line of the eyebrow while Krishna was given a slender receding forehead and narrow waist. Each was made to seem the acme of elegance and the result was a conception of Krishna and his love as the very embodiment of aristocratic breeding.

The same sense of aristocratic loveliness is conveyed by a scene of dancing figures almost life size in the palace library at Jaipur.[90]

Painted under Raja Pratap Singh (1779-1803) the picture shows ladies of the palace impersonating Radha and Krishna dancing together attended by girl musicians.[91] Against a pale green background, the figures, dressed in greenish yellow, pale greyish blue and the purest white, posture with calm a.s.sured grace, while the pure tones and exquisite line-work invest the scene with gay and luminous clarity. We do not know the circ.u.mstances in which this great picture was painted but the existence of another large-scale picture portraying the circular dance--the lines of cowgirls revolving like flowers, with Radha and Krishna swaying in their midst--suggests that the Krishna theme had once again inflamed a Rajput ruler's imagination.[92]

Such groups of paintings are, at most, exquisite exceptions and it is rather in the Rajput states of the Punjab Hills--an area remote and quite distinct from Rajasthan--that the theme of Krishna the divine lover received its most enraptured expression in the eighteenth century. Until the second half of the seventeenth century this stretch of country bordering the Western Himalayas seems to have had no kind of painting whatsoever. In 1678, however, Raja Kirpal Pal inherited the tiny state of Basohli and almost immediately a new artistic urge became apparent.

Pictures were produced on a scale comparable to that of Udaipur thirty years earlier and at the same time a local style of great emotional intensity makes its sudden appearance.[93] This new Basohli style, with its flat planes of brilliant green, brown, red, blue and orange, its savage profiles and great intense eyes has obvious connections with Udaipur paintings of the 1650-60 period. And although exact historical proof is still wanting, the most likely explanation is that under Rana Raj Singh some Udaipur artists were persuaded to migrate to Basohli. We know that Rajput rulers in the Punjab Hills were often connected by marriage with Rajput families in Rajasthan and it is therefore possible that during a visit to Udaipur, Raja Kirpal Pal recruited his atelier. Udaipur painting, however, can hardly have been the only source for even in its earliest examples Basohli painting has a smooth polish, a savage sophistication and a command of shading which suggests the influence of the Mughal style of Delhi. We must a.s.sume, in fact, a series of influences determined to a great extent by Raja Kirpal Pal's political contacts, his private journeys and individual taste, but perhaps above all by an urge to express his feelings for Krishna in a novel and personal manner. The result is not only a new style but a special choice of subject-matter. The _Rasika Priya_ and the _Bhagavata Purana_, the texts so greatly favoured at Udaipur, were discarded and in their place Basohli artists produced a series of isolated scenes from Krishna's life--the child Krishna stealing b.u.t.ter,[94] Krishna the gallant robbing the cowgirls or exacting toll, Krishna extinguis.h.i.+ng the forest-fire,[95] Krishna the violent lover devouring Radha with hungry eyes. Their greatest achievements, however, were two versions of Bhanu Datta's _Rasamanjari_, one of them completed in 1695,[96] shortly after Raja Kirpal Pal's death, the other almost certainly fifteen years earlier.[97] The text in question is a treatise on poetics ill.u.s.trating how romantic situations should best be treated in Sanskrit poetry--the conduct of mature mistresses, experienced lovers, sly go-betweens, clowns or jokers being all subjected to a.n.a.lysis.[98] The subject of the text is secular romantic poetry and Krishna himself is never mentioned. None the less, in producing their ill.u.s.trations, the artists made Krishna the central figure and we can only conclude that eschewing the obvious _Rasika Priya_, Raja Kirpal Pal had directed his artists to do for Sanskrit what Keshav Das had done for Hindi poetry--to celebrate Krishna as the most varied and skilled of lovers and as a corollary show him in a whole variety of romantic and poetic situations.

As a result Krishna was portrayed in a number of highly conflicting roles--as husband, rake, seducer, paramour and gallant.