ART AND SOUL
Ways of seeing

B.N. Goswamy on how important it is to see works of art in their context to be able to appreciate them fully

How often, how very often, we miss the point of some works of art, because we do not see them in their entirety, or make the effort to take in their true context. Admittedly, the effort is not always easy to make, but even a small measure of persistence, the trust that there is likely to be more to a work than appears on the surface, or at first sight, pays off. One is reminded of this again and again.

As I was, when looking, recently, at a finely detailed Mughal painting showing a gathering of mystics and poets listening to a singer and his small group of musicians. The venerable men sit impassive for the most part, but one of them, suddenly excited, throws his hands up in the air, as if deeply moved, apparently by the words being sung by the bearded singer who sits facing him.

There must have been something to the song, one imagines. But everything became clear, at least for me, when I turned the painting over and found attached to the back a beautifully calligraphed sheet which contained a passage from that great Persian classic, Sheikh Sa’adi’s Gulistan. The verses contained a ‘conversation’, in Sa’adi’s usual terse manner.

It is moving; and one can understand the joy on the face and in the figure of the venerable mystic as he raises his hands in abandon and admiration. As if a vision had come swimming into his ken all of a sudden.

In the same group in which I found this painting was another work with what appeared initially to be a commonly seen theme: a group of devotees visiting a holy man. But there was something different in it: the women visiting the saintly figure wore wings and they had in their hands sumptuous trays and vessels. The holy man was identified by a brief inscription as ‘Hazrat Ibrahim’; and in one corner of the painting was another, forlorn-looking mendicant-like figure seated inside a small hut or cave. Who ‘Hazrat Ibrahim’ was I knew a little: a ninth century king of Balkh who renounced his kingdom and turned into a dervish, a man of God. But there was more to the figure, as one got to know from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya, another classic of the Persian world.

Enlightenment came to this king slowly, the text tells us. And the Grace of God shone in him, but not before he had certain experiences. These experiences are woven, like parables, into the tale of the king’s life.

Once, we read, the piously-inclined king was woken at midnight by strangers searching for their lost camel on the roof of his palace. When he asked how they were expecting to find a camel on the roof, the mystical reply was: "Just as you hope to find God while dwelling in a kingly palace and dressed in kingly attire." Hearing this, Ibrahim fell into thought. Another tale says that Ibrahim, while still a king, could only sleep in a bedchamber perfumed with flowers. Once a slave-girl, having massaged her master, chanced to doze off, her head dropping on his pillow. On waking up, Ibrahim was greatly affronted and ordered her to be beaten. Instead of crying, however, the girl began to laugh.

Asked the reason, she replied that it was owing to the absurdity of the punishment. "If to have leant her head a little moment on the royal bed, where the perfumes induced slumber, merited her undergoing such punishment, what did his Majesty not deserve for having slept all his life on such a bed?"

The reproach went home, we read, for at once Ibrahim tore off his kingly raiment, renounced his queen and his son, and went off into the wilderness to live the life of a fakir.

Recognising him as his own man, however, God decided to take care of him, and night after night, He sent angels that brought him the choicest food in that wilderness, despite his protestations. When we recognise that the painter of this finely painted page is capturing this moment in the life of ‘Hazrat Ibrahim’, things fall in place.

And a clear meaning comes to attach to the work. What about the sad-looking mendicant inside the hut seen at right? Another part of the story provides a clue. To this dervish, too, the angels used to bring food, but only a frugal meal.

And when, driven by envy, he asked the angels why Ibrahim was being plied with the choicest food, while he got very little, the answer, offered on God’s behalf, was: ‘You were a poor man with little to eat before you donned the habit of a dervish; you gave up very little, thus. This man, Ibrahim, however, threw away everything for love of me. What he gets now is only small recompense." Suddenly, this part of the painting also falls into place. But not, as I said earlier, without our making some effort to understand the context of things.

HOME