Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur

Narrator:
We begin with a painting that epitomizes the governing metaphors of the exhibition, Garden and Cosmos. Its two halves contrast a verdant ashram on the left, with a vast expanse of dark water on the right. They represent the hermitage of a great sage, and his revelation of the all-encompassing ocean that covers the universe before creation.

It was commissioned by Maharaja Vijai Singh in the second half of the eighteenth century. Debra Diamond describes this image.

Debra Diamond:
Look closely at the ashram. It’s a space of idyllic serenity and human dimensions. Slender holy men calmly meditate within small leaf huts. The white bearded sage Medha, who is seated on an antelope skin—as Indian ascetics are wont to do—listens to the tales of a king and a merchant who have arrived together at his ashram.

The king, who is still wearing his crown, relates how he lost his kingdom. And the merchant, who raises his hands in the gesture of worshipful respect, tells how he lost all of his wealth. In order to assuage the pain of their losses, the great sage relates that the world in which we live is but an illusion, or maya.

The sage Medha tells them of the periods in which the universe does not exist, which the artist has represented on the right. It’s a stark contrast from the pastel-colored ashram. Dark swirling waters extend over the entire panel, and at the ocean’s center the great deity Vishnu sleeps on a multiheaded serpent. As he sleeps, he dreams the world.

Debra Diamond:
Let me start by showing a painting that’s far more sensuous than typical portraits of Rathore rulers. This elegant moonlit scene depicts Maharaja Bakhat Singh on a palace terrace with twenty-seven beautiful women. Several, their hands tipped red from henna, caress his leg. Another gently takes a blossom he offers. Still others fan the king, carry his sword, and bring platters of refreshments. Bakhat Singh himself lolls comfortably on a golden bed covered in a floral textile very similar to the embroidered tent canopy hanging in the entrance gallery.

We can see in front of the bed an abandoned drum and several stringed instruments, which suggest an intermission in a musical performance. The subject is therefore similar to the Jaswant Singh entertainment painting. But its sensuous mood is here heightened, and its palette is dominated by pink and white.

This mood of sensuous royal pleasure pervades all of the paintings in this gallery—all of which depict the same Maharaja Bakhat Singh enjoying his palace gardens at the fort of Nagaur. Although art historians have known of Bakhat Singh portraits for several years, this group of Nagaur palace paintings was only recently rediscovered.

Narrator:
Although these paintings are all lovely and light, they belie the horrendous deed that brought Bakhat to the throne of Nagaur. Nagaur is an important principality just to the north of Jodhpur. In 1724, Bakhat Singh murdered his father, Maharaja Ajit Singh. This was probably instigated by the Mughal emperor as well as by Bakhat’s elder brother, Abhai Singh of Jodhpur.

After Ajit’s assassination, Abhai Singh succeeded to the throne of Marwar, and as a reward he gave Bakhat Singh the territory of Nagaur. Bakhat Singh rebuilt the fort’s palaces and gardens in the Mughal style, which was the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan aesthetic of its day. He built delicate white palaces with cusped arches, and a sophisticated hydraulic system circulated water from subterranean wells through narrow water channels into great fountains. The water was then recycled and used to irrigate the lush gardens.

Narrator:
This painting tells the story of Rama crossing into Lanka to rescue his beloved wife Sita. Rama is shown several times. The first time you see his blue figure is in the painting’s upper left, where he stands with his brother Lakshmana and Hanuman, the monkey god.

Rama and his army of monkeys have scoured all of South India looking for his kidnapped wife, Sita. They learn that she’s being kept in the palace of the evil demon Ravana. When they reach the strip of ocean between India and Lanka, they are faced with the conundrum of how to cross. Debra Diamond describes this image.

Debra Diamond:
I love this. It’s fantastically exuberant, although it’s exactly the kind of landscape painting that was long criticized by art historians of Indian painting because it wasn’t naturalistic. It conveys the story of Rama’s crossing to Lanka with incredible verve.

Rama’s army, which includes bears as well as monkeys, throws together a bridge made out of pink boulders. Two monkeys carry Rama and his brother Laksman on their backs, while other monkeys in their haste to get across jump into the ocean and swim. Some even hitch rides on the back of makaras, friendly sea monsters. After Rama’s monkey army reaches Sri Lanka, we see them encamped between several small white palace cities from which gardens burst forth. If we look over to the right, we see a tall golden castle bristling with cannons and drawn with a spiky line. In the very top terrace, we see the ten-headed and multi-armed demon Ravana anxiously gesturing as he sees Rama’s army advance.

There are two aspects of this painting that are particularly exciting to me. One is the utter genius with which this artist has composed the landscape. The sky is filled with wonderful rolling scalloped-edged clouds. These are one of the distinctive elements of eighteenth-century Jodhpur painting. The energy of the ocean, which so improbably arches upwards to meet the sky, creates a powerful visual form. It also allows him to contrast the personalities of Rama on the left with Ravana on the right. Rama is utterly calm as he surveys the ocean. Ravana’s ten arms are whirling in anxiety; it’s inevitable that he’ll lose this battle.

Narrator:
This grand painting depicts the coronation of Maharaja Man Singh, who ruled Marwar from 1803 until 1843. The important state ceremony takes place in the Sringar courtyard of Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur. The fort’s towering stone walls are carved in lace-like filigree with open windows, or jails, that allow cooling breezes into the palaces.

This is an absolute record of that day. All of the important noblemen have gathered around the maharaja, who sits on a lion throne. The artist Amardas has captured the pivotal moment in the ceremony when a nobleman applies the Raj tilak to the new maharaja’s forehead. The rajtilak is a mark of sovereignty, rather like the crown of a European ruler. When the current maharaja of Jodhpur looks at this painting, it reminds him of his own coronation ceremony, which took place in this very same courtyard in 1952.

Maharaja Gaj Singh II:
That’s actually the exact spot in the fort where I had my Raj tilak. It still exists as it is. It’s changed a bit, but it was a similar gathering like that. All men, and of course the clothes are slightly different, but very similar.

Narrator:
If we look at the surface of the painting, we can see that it has sustained damage over the years. Also, the courtiers and women in the lower left have never been colored in. Amardas must have been working on this when the fragile truce of Man Singh’s accession to the throne unraveled in late 1804. A posthumous son had been born to the previous maharaja, and Man Singh refused to recognize the infant. The noblemen left the court and began a civil war. So the painting was never finished.

Narrator:
This is a Nath siddha, or perfected being. He stands against a luminous blue background in the yogic posture known as tadasana. His eyes are crossed in deep meditation. We recognize him as a Nath siddha because his body is pale blue from ashes, and he wears large kundal earrings through holes bored in each ear’s inner cartilage.

Along the central axis of his yogic body we see various Hindu deities and Nath siddhas seated within glowing lotus flowers. These are the chakras, or energy centers, that a yogin energizes through purification, breathing exercises, and postures, or asanas. Debra Diamond explains the process.

Debra Diamond:
As this energy pierces each chakra, it transforms gross matter into subtle essence, and therefore with each piercing the yogin gains the ability to control matter—to fly, for example, or see or hear over vast distances. The entire process takes twelve years, according to the great Nath teachers, and it’s over the course of these twelve years that ordinary mortals become gods.

The reason that we find the great Hindu deities on the bottom half of the body is that Naths understand perfected god men, or siddhas, to be greater than the gods themselves. After all, the gods are destroyed in every cosmic dissolution, but the Nath mahasiddhas themselves live on in a celestial heaven.

Debra Diamond:
These three sublimely glowing paintings depict the origins of the cosmos, consciousness, and matter. The shimmering gold panel that appears on the left of all three paintings, which are absolutely unprecedented in Indian art, represent the central Hindu conception of the Absolute.

Three panels in this painting move from left to right. In the center and right panels we see two deities. These deities represent consciousness and matter, known as Prakriti and Purusha. They are the first and most subtle manifestations of the Absolute into being.

This concept of absolute being, which is formless and eternal, is paradoxical for those of us who haven’t practiced hatha yoga. It’s both all-pervasive and everything, and it exists at the same time as all matter and being.