Ascetic by a lotus pool, illustrating the musical mode Devagandhara Ragini
Ragamala, or the pictorial representation of the various ragas, was a widely popular genre in Mughal India. Devagandhara is depicted as a lady whom the pain of separation from her lover has transformed into an emaciated ascetic.
Details
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Title
Ascetic by a lotus pool, illustrating the musical mode Devagandhara Ragini
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Series
Garland of Ragas
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Artist/maker
Bundi School (active c. 1590 - 1850) -
Associated place
Bundi (place of creation) -
Date
1645 - 1655 -
Material and technique
gouache with gold on paper
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Material index
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Technique index
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Object type
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Dimensions
mount 55.4 x 40.2 cm (height x width)
painting 25 x 15.5 cm (height x width) -
No. of items
1
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Credit line
Bequeathed by Douglas and Mary Barrett, 2013.
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Museum location
Museum department
Eastern Art
Accession no.
EA2013.46
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Catalogue text
The musical mode Devagandhara, performed in the morning after sunrise, is conceived as a solitary lady whom the pain of separation from her lover has transformed into an emaciated ascetic. Here only the yogi's jewelled ornaments reveal a vestige of his femininity, though the domed pavillion standing for his hermitage is more like a palace bed-chamber. Its projecting finial in the form of a makara (aquatic monster) holding a bright orange-red pennant symbolises the love-god Kama. Signs of natural fecundity abound, with banana and mango trees, harmonious pairs of cranes and ducks, and flowering lotuses. The yogi sits apparently withdrawn, telling his prayer-beads inside a gomukhi bag while toying with a stray strand of hair. The ragini exhibits a commonly found tension between the erotic and ascetic moods, between sensual enjoyment and holy renunciation.
At Bundi and its near neighbour Kotah in south-east Rajastan numerous series of ragamala pictures were produced, both in wall-paintings and on paper. They derive iconographically from a dispersed ragamala, painted in 1591 at Chunar near Benares by artists trained at the Mughal court, which must have been in Bundi possession at this date or not long after. Indigenous Bundi painters interpreted the same subjects in their own robust style, often, as here, recreating the given theme with a strong flavour of the appropriate rasa or mood.In: Topsfield, Andrew, Indian Paintings from Oxford Collections, Ashmolean Handbooks (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum in association with the Bodleian Library, 1994)
Glossary of terms
Ragamala
Ragini
Further reading
Topsfield, Andrew, Indian Paintings from Oxford Collections, Ashmolean Handbooks (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum in association with the Bodleian Library, 1994), no. 11 on p. 28, p. 6, illus. p. 29
Reference URL
