Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T08:24:11.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Disciple of the Yogini “Swallowed up” by the Tiger: Asceticism and Eremitic Life in Indian Painting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2022

ROSELYNE HUREL
ROSELYNE HUREL*
Affiliation:
Independent scholar
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The long tradition of asceticism in India has an extensive iconography. It usually represents a poor and emaciated man, living on his own, occasionally with wild animals for company. Hindu and Muslim art and literature contain many such scenes, but female ascetics or yoginis only rarely appear. However, there is a seventeenth-century miniature in the Rietberg Museum which depicts the well-known subject of a young disciple visiting her guru. Seated together in a landscape in front of a thatched hut, they are surrounded by precisely painted Ustad Mansur-style flora and fauna. It was customary practice in Indian workshops for artists to copy original works by their masters, and to make versions using a stencil or charba. This particular miniature has been recreated several times. In the earliest, the two yoginis are placed in the same setting with their modest possessions. The topos remained popular until the end of the eighteenth century when a change occurred: the disciple of the old yogini disappeared, having been “swallowed up” by a tiger. Instead of two mystics talking together, the scene depicted is that of a tiger near a hermit, a typical Ragamala image known as Bengali Ragini. These new compositions were readily acquired by European collectors. A final version also exists that derives from the original Mughal topos which depicts the three: hermit, tiger, and…disciple.

Keywords

AsceticBengali Raginiyoginis
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 4: Studies in Honour of Barbara Brend , October 2022 , pp. 982 - 1002
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am deeply grateful to Diana Scarisbrick who has translated the text of this article from the French, and also to friends and colleagues who have so kindly helped and encouraged me with this project: Mehreen Chida-Razvi, Anna L. Dallapiccola, Marie-Christine David (†), Véronique Goarin, Henry Noltie, Alison Ohta, Diana Scarisbrick, Emily Shovelton, and Caroline Widmer.

References

1 Leach, L.Y., Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London, 1995), Vol. II, pp. 556–564Google Scholar; Diamond, D. (ed.), Yoga: The Art of Transformation (Washington DC, 2013), pp. 151–156Google Scholar.

2 Oman, J. C., The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (Delhi, 1973), pp. 45–51Google Scholar, 94–103.

3 C. W. Ernst, ‘Muslim interpreters of yoga’, in Yoga, (ed.) Diamond, pp. 62, 81, no. 7, 58–67.

4 Habighorst, L. V., Reichart, P. A. and Sharma, V., Love for Pleasure: Betel, Tobacco, Wine and Drugs in Indian Miniatures (Koblenz, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 R. Hurel, Miniatures & Peintures Indiennes. Collection du département des Estampes et de la Photographie de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris, 2010–2011), Vol. I, p. 133, no. 183; F.-J. Vollmer and F. Weis, Angels and Madonnas in Islam: Mughal and other Oriental Miniatures in the Vollmer Collection (Zürich, 2015), p. 60, no. 23.

6 Brend, B., The Emperor Akbar's ‘Khamsa’ of Nizami (London, 1995), pp. 26–32Google Scholar.

7 Britschgi, J. and Fischer, E., Rama und Sita: Das Ramayana in der Malerei Indiens (Zürich, 2008), pp. 73, 77Google Scholar, 83, 87, 89.

8 H. Suleiman, Miniatures of Babur-Namah (Tashkent, 1978), pl. 29, 54; Diamond (ed.), Yoga, p. 184, fig. 14d.

9 J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont (trans.), Le Livre de Babur. Mémoires du premier Grand Mogol des Indes (Paris, 1985), p. 223.

10 Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, Vol. I, pp. 131, 133, no. 1.228; Kessler, R. L., ‘In the company of the enlightened: portraits of Mughal rulers and holy men’, in Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (Cambridge, MA, 2002), p. 23Google Scholar, fig. 2.

11 Kessler, ‘In the company of the enlightened’, pp. 16–41, figs. 3, 4.

12 W. M. Thackston (trans.), The Jahangirnama. Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (Washington DC, 1999), pp. 209, 283, 285, 312–313.

13 Musée Guimet, Paris, inv. OA 7171, legs Marteau.

14 Cl. Hurat and L. Massignon, ‘Les entretiens de Lahore, entre le Prince Impérial Dara Shikuh et l'ascète hindou Baba Lal Das’, Journal Asiatique CCIX (1926), pp. 285–334. See also infra note 48.

15 Falk, T. and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the Indian Office Library (London, 1981)Google Scholar, nos. 68-f18, 68-f33v; Kessler, ‘In the company of the enlightened’, p. 31, fig. 6.

16 E. W. Gadon, ‘Dara Shikuh's mystical vision of Hindu-Muslim synthesis’, in Facets of Indian Art: A Symposium Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, (ed.) R. Skelton (London, 1986), pp. 153–157.

17 My thanks to Caroline Widmer for obtaining this photograph. Museum Rietberg, Zürich, inv. RVI 987; painting 12 x 7.8 cm, page 37.5 x 25 cm. Prov.: Sotheby's London, 10 April 1989, lot 40, pl. XXI.

18 Mallison, J., Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Leiden, 2011), Vol. IIIGoogle Scholar, pp. 407–428; Briggs, G. W., Gorakhnath and the Kanphata yogis (Delhi, 1973)Google Scholar.

19 In the early twentieth century, some of the finest Mughal muraqqas passed through the hands of the famous Parisian dealer Georges Demotte, which he dismantled. This hashiya comes from a Persian dictionary, the Farhang-i-Jahangir, a manuscript of Jamal-ud-Din Husain (d. 1608). See Wright, E., Muraqqa’: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Alexandria, VA, 2008), p. 234Google Scholar.

20 My thanks to Dr Anna Dallapiccola and Dr Henry Noltie for identifying these plants.

21 Hurel, Miniatures & Peintures Indiennes, Vol. I, p. 130, no. 171; Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, no. 388-xvii.

22 Das, A. K., Wonders of Nature: Ustad Mansur at the Mughal Court (Mumbai, 2012), pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

23 Zebrowski, M., Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India (London, 1997), p. 194Google Scholar, pl. 293–295.

24 Private collection, 13 x 8 cm; formerly in the collection of Jacob Hirsch (1874–1955).

25 Christie's South Kensington, London, 1 October 2012, lot 99; painting 11.6 x 8 cm, page 35.4 x 24.5 cm.

26 Areca nut, spices, and slaked lime, wrapped in betel leaf for chewing.

27 Album nos. 30–37, 39, 42–44, 66, 68.

28 M. E. Aitken, ‘Transcendence and desire in Ragamala paintings’, in Yoga, (ed.) Diamond, pp. 214–222.

29 Goswamy, B. N., I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Hurel, Miniatures & Peintures Indiennes, Vol. I, no. 167; E. Hannam, Eastern Encounters (London, 2018), no. 76.

30 J. Bor and Ph. Bruguière, Gloire des princes, louange des dieux. Patrimoine musical de l'Hindoustan du XIVe au XXe siècle (Paris, 2003), figs. 4, 9, 34–35, 40–41, 49, 64.

31 Ebeling, K., Ragamala Painting (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar, nos. 290, 292, 298; 278, 287, 294; Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, nos. 64xxii, 426x, 505xxii.

32 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 213, no. 94, fig. 119; Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, pp. 161–163, no. 346i-xxxii; p. 448, fig. xxvi, 11 x 6.9 cm.

33 In the so-called Hanuman's System, which is the rarest used, the Bengali Ragini is set with the Bhairava Raga.

34 Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, nos. 64-xxi, 349-vi, 350-iv, 370-xxxv, 426-xxviii, 505-iii, 521-xvi, 560-iv.

35 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, no. 285, 289, 291; Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, nos. 64-xxiii, 346-xxix, 348-ix, 64-xii, 262-vi, 346-xiii, 348-x, 383-iii, 388-xx, 426-xxxi, 431-x, xv, 500, 517-xiv, 521-xiv.

36 The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Inv. I 5062, fol. 33 (4); image 7 x 11 cm.

37 During these years both Polier and Johnson were employed by Sir Warren Hastings in the service of the British administration of Bengal.

38 Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 214, no. 95; E. and Waldschmidt, R. L., Miniatures of Musical Inspiration in the Collection of the Berlin Museum of Indian Art: Ragamala. Pictures from Northern India and the Deccan (Berlin, 1975)Google Scholar, Vol. II, p. 379, fig. 135, p. 401, section 209, inv; I 5062/4, 11 x 7 cm, and passim.

39 W. Hauptman, ‘Beckford, Brandoin, and the “rajah”: aspects of an eighteenth-century collection’, Apollo (May 1996), pp. 30–39.

40 Waldschmidt, Miniatures of Musical Inspiration, Vol. II, p. 435, n. 15.

41 Hurel, Miniatures & Peintures Indiennes, Vol. I, no. 172, Gentil's donation, 1785; image 10.9 x 6.7 cm, page 36 x 25 cm.

42 Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, pp. 163–165, 449, no. 348 i-xxxvi; see no. 4, 348-xxiii, 11 x 6.7 cm; Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, p. 214, no. 95.

43 Waldschmidt, E., ‘Londoner Entsprechungen zu einer Berliner Serie musikinspirierter indischer Miniaturen’, NGAW VII (1962), p. 185Google Scholar.

44 Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, Johnson album 66, pp. 232–234, no. 431i-xxxvi, fig. 515-517; see fig. 431-xxiii, p. 517, 11.1 x 6.7 cm.

45 Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze, p. 160, fig. 221.

46 British Museum, inv. 1913,1218, 0.8; painting 20 x 13.1 cm, page 34.5 x 27.7 cm.

47 Christie's, London, 26 April 2005, lot 242; 23 x 16.5 cm.

48 Schmitz, B. and Desai, Z.-D., Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts in The Raza Library, Rampur (New Delhi, 2006), p. 19Google Scholar, Album I, fol. 13a, pl. 10.