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3. MAHARANA JAWAN SINGH WORSHIPPING AT THE VISHNUPADA TEMPLE AT GAYA India (Udaipur) 1834-1835 Height: 65 cm Width: 48 cm |
Opaque watercolour heightened with gold and silver on paper. An inscription in black devanagari on the verso tells us that Maharana Jawan Singh (reigned 1828-1838) visited the Vishnupada Temple in Gaya on 23rd January 1834: maharana sri javan sighji gadhyaji (?) padarya so sri visanu carana rabadara (?) dasan karta thaka sabat 1890 ra pos sud 13 (1) According to Andrew Topsfield, who has published this painting twice and transcribed the inscription above, on coming to the gaddi (throne) in 1828, Jawan Singh abandoned the sobriety he had exhibited as a prince, which had so impressed British observers, and indulged in debauchery, extravagance and intoxication, doubling the expenses of the court from the time of his father, Bhim Singh (reigned 1778-1828).(2) Like his father, Jawan Singh also actively patronised the court artists, in particular Ghasi, to whom Topsfield attributes the present painting. Ghasi began his career as a draftsman for Colonel James Tod, and after the death of Chokha in 1824 became the main artist of the Mewar court. Topsfield notes that Ghasi’s best paintings of the early years of Jawan Singh’s reign tended to be scenes of merry-making, for example the riotous “Maharana Jawan Singh and courtiers playing Holi in the Amar Vilas” of circa 1830.(3) After a few years of indulgence, Jawan Singh seems to have undergone a change of character, or perhaps a return to the sobriety of his youth, as the result of an access of religious feeling.(4) From August 1833 to June 1834, he embarked on a pilgrimage tour of holy sites at Mathura, Vrindaban, Ayodhya, Allahabad, Benares and Gaya.(5) At Gaya he performed for Bhim Singh the sraddha ceremony where ancestors are offered food, water and prayers to express love, gratitude and ensure their peaceful transition to the afterlife. One distinctive ancestral food offering is rice or barley balls. As stated in the inscription, the specific purpose of Jawan Singh’s visit to the Vishnupada Temple at Gaya on 23rd January 1834 is to receive darshan by seeing the image of Vishnu in the holy artefact of the Vishnupada or sacred footprint. The sraddha ritual for his father is not mentioned in the inscription or depicted in the painting, so presumably that happened on another occasion, possibly taking place over several days, whilst Jawan Singh was at Gaya. The Vishnupada Temple was built in 1787 by Ahalya Bai, the widow of Malhar Rao Holkar of Indore. The painting shows the nimbated Jawan Singh dressed in white, standing respectfully with palms pressed together in anjali mudra, in front of the central chattri shrine of the temple that contains the gold pada (footprint) of Vishnu that has been carved in stone. A priest stands facing him holding an aarti lamp. assisting Jawan Singh’s darshan by chanting holy verses and guiding him through the ritual. Darshan is not a passive seeing but a reciprocal two-way spiritual experience; the deity also sees, acknowledges and blesses the devotee. The priest is the necessary intermediary between the seeker of darshan and the divine but even so, as convention dictates, he is depicted much smaller than his important and majestic royal visitor. Within the temple stand nobles and courtiers on either side of the shrine while the Rana’s attendants throng the courtyard outside. The temple is festooned with yellow garlands and its eaves, and the roofs of surrounding buildings, are lined with hundreds of earthenware lamps, the only indication that this is in fact a night scene. This is reinforced by a few attendants holding torches. Large red, silver and gold flags fly from the golden finial at the apex of the temple, while a large golden bell hangs at the entrance to the temple complex. A red sandstone Ganesha is enshrined in a niche on the wall to the left. Charming anecdotal details can be observed on the fringes of the royal entourage. A few women and a small playful child look at the spectacle from the sides, while two men not dressed in ceremonial court attire but simple dhotis, ignore the proceedings to chat between themselves. Two women under the shade of a tree seem equally oblivious to the Rana’s visit and are lost in their individual thoughts. Topsfield suggests that to record this occasion, the painter Ghasi would have been part of the royal entourage.(5) Topsfield notes that the painting shows “his sure sense of pattern-making in the rectangular compartmentation of the temple enclosure and distorted perspective of its arched colonnades. The delineation of the architecture also reveals his hand, and the cool white, blue and grey tones of the setting complement the garlanded interior in which the Rana has darshan of the stone footprint of Vishnu.”(6) Provenance: Mewar Royal Collection British Rail Pension Fund, 1970-1994 Sotheby’s, London, Indian Miniatures: The Property of the British Rail Pension Fund, 26th April 1994, lot 50 Collection of Dr William K. Ehrenfeld (1934-2005), San Francisco Acquired directly from the Ehrenfeld Collection by Mrs Suzanne von Liebig Published: Rosa Maria Cimino, Life at Court in Rajasthan: Indian Miniatures from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, 1985, p. 33, cat. no. 32. Andrew Topsfield, Court Painting at Udaipur: Art under the patronage of the Maharanas of Mewar, 2002, pp. 246-247, fig. 220. Exhibited: Life at Court in Rajasthan: Indian Miniatures from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, 22nd March-22nd May 1985, Palazzo Reale, Turin, organised by CESMEO, Centro Piemontese di Studi sul Medio ed Estremo Oriente. References: 1. Transliteration of inscription by Andrew Topsfield published in Rosa Maria Cimino, Life at Court in Rajasthan: Indian Miniatures from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, 1985, p. 111, no. 32. 2. Andrew Topsfield, Court Painting at Udaipur: Art under the patronage of the Maharanas of Mewar, 2002, pp. 245-247. 3. Ibid., p. 244, fig. 219 and p. 245. 4. Ibid., p. 247. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. |