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The show of engravings and etchings, currently on view at the Sackler Art Gallery in Washington, under the title "Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India", is obviously of an altogether different order, however.
For one thing, it has been put together by Robert del Bonta, a serious student of India and things Indian, and every single object in it comes from his personal collection of ‘more than two thousand loose prints and thousands more within books’. For another, in scholarly fashion, it places each category of objects in its social and cultural context, speaks in detail about individual painters, engravers, and printers, and traces how Europeans and Americans constructed knowledge about India through prints. The focus, as Robert says himself, is ‘on the curious mixture that resulted when events witnessed "up close" in India were published "from afar," in Europe or America’. Names like Picart, Tavernier, Kircher, Rowlandson, flit in and out of the texts that go with this show. Some prints, especially showing figures or observances that must have been completely unfamiliar to outsiders: faqirs and sadhus of all ilk, men walking over beds of burning coals, strange healing practices, and the like — might still look bizarre, but these are analysed, understood, and interpreted.
Consider this, for instance — excerpted from del Bonta’s text — in the context of a group of engravings that deal with ceremonies. Europeans were intrigued by Indian ceremonies: self-mortification in the form of swinging from hooks (charak puja), walking on hot coals, or being crushed under the wheels of a deity’s chariot. But most of them associated them ‘with barbarity or Christian atonement for sins’. In any case, the 19th century British colonial officials did not know how to handle these. Was there a way of legislating about them? The conflict was obvious: should they follow their "Christian moral to suppress ‘barbarous’ ceremonies"or "a governmental one to respect Indian customs"? Engraving after engraving follows in this section, distaste mixed with curiosity. But, occasionally, one even comes upon self-criticism in the political cartoon-like renderings that Thomas Rowlandson was famous for in England. While depicting a widow-burning scene — something he surely had never seen with his own eyes — he draws as much attention to the widow, dressed more or less like a European demi-monde, ascending the funeral pyre, as to the British officers standing by, accepting bribes from Brahmins for turning a blind eye to this banned practice. A doggerel follows the illustration: "Here British mercy shuts her eyes/Nor will she hear the victim’s cries,/Because a fee, at any time,/Can make a sacrifice sublime!" The fascination for Indian faqirs and sadhus was limitless as far as outsiders were concerned. In this collection, we meet with ‘Gosains’ and ‘Juttees’, ‘urdhvabahus’ and ‘sunneasees’.
For illustration, artists and engravers picked most often the most outlandish, the most grotesque of scenes or figures, mixing things up, borrowing things from here and there, creating pastiches, adding new elements, making copies of copies of copies. Take the case of the engraving titled ‘Hindoo devotees in various attitudes of Penance’ which Thomas Maurice seems to have based on a much earlier print by the French jeweller, Tavernier. Here, while one sees shades of a Daniells’ aquatint of a small shrine set in the midst of a grove of banyan trees, every type and practice is brought in. ‘Yogi’ after ‘yogi’, bearded and nearly naked, stands with arms locked over the head in urdhvabahu fashion, some lie on the ground as on a bed of nails, others stand thrusting their feet in open flames, while a few prostrate themselves before a shrine inside which a monstrous head can be seen installed. All this while, two Europeans walk into the scene, wearing recognisably triangular hats, superior steps, confident stances. It is as if they had invited themselves to an exhibition. In another image showing "Hindu Devotees", two recluses — ‘charlatans’, ‘men of deceit’, ‘capable of doing more evil than good’ were some of the descriptions one comes upon, not of these figures but of sadhus in general — are seen at the edge of a romantic-looking stream. The bearded man with long hair coiled in a bun on the top of his head, wearing only a brief loincloth, holding a long staff in one hand and a cage in the other, stands, body lightly flexed, looking at another, seated on a rock across the little water-fall, who has his/her mouth covered with a piece of cloth — a Jain mukhapatti — and holds in hand what looks like a small lamp. What they are doing here nobody would know; what the tomb-like structure appears in the distance is anybody’s guess. Everything is a little askew, an artificial construct. And then, of course, there are a few things that look like calendar prints, among them a playing card wrapper which serves as an advertisement for some manufacturing company. The image? Shiva walking. There is a Bengali caption at the top, and words in English at the bottom, close to Shiva’s feet that pronounce this to be a ‘Registered Trade Mark’ of "R.K." The image is clearly inspired by a Kalighat painting, but Shiva has taken on a new aspect. The trishul he carries looks like a fleur-de-lis prong, his apparel has shifted from a leopard or tiger-skin to something that vaguely resembles a peacock’s plumage although with different colouring. But then, isn’t this perhaps the essence of the situation? Everything changes, everything is played around with, nothing shows real understanding. And yet, one can’t tear one’s eyes away.
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