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Whenever, I imagine, one speaks of a rishi — unless one is taking into account today’s motley range of persons who arrogate to themselves this status, and advertise their ‘spiritual’ wares about — the term ‘saptarishi’ also comes almost involuntarily to the mind. The reference, of course, is to the seven great sages, who are a part of our tradition and our imagination: seers who lived a long, long time ago, men ‘who could reach beyond this mundane world by means of spiritual knowledge’. We may not be able to recount their names but most know that in the Vedas, they are spoken of, their word regarded with the greatest reverence. Rishis figure also in the epics and the Puranas, of course: from those texts one, at least, knows the names of Valmiki and Vasishtha, Vishwamitra and Markandeya, Gautama and Kapila; one has possibly even heard of a blind rishi by the wonderful name of Dirghatamasa: ‘he whose darkness was long’.
But as a term ‘Saptarishi’, unless one speaks of the asterism Ursa Major in the sky that we know by this name, or of the Saptarishi samvat that was sometimes used in the Pahari region, has a special connotation: sacred and almost unknowable. From age to age, and in text after text, we get different names, for the manvantaras — periods of astronomical time within an aeon — changed, but, whatever the combination of names, one speaks of them always with reverence, for they were in so many ways the holders and interpreters of eternal laws; to them, the greatest of men resorted for counsel, the most powerful of the land submitted. They were not all contemporaries, but it is as if by bringing them together in the painting reproduced here, the painters were invoking their collective blessings. They were pure and sacred. For, they were all manas-putras or ‘mind-born sons’of Brahma. The seven sages here are all identified through clear inscriptions in Takri characters: starting from top left, and moving clockwise, they are Vishwamitra, Jamadagni, Gautama, Vasishtha, Attri, Bharadwaj, and Kashyapa. And the list tallies exactly with the seven sages, who are listed in two highly authoritative texts, the Brihadaryanaka Upanishad, and the Shatapatha Brahmana. Naturally, these are not portraits of the sages: for no likeness of them exists. And even when any of them is represented in a series of paintings, he is apt to look entirely different from what he might appear as in another series or manuscript. These are imagined, idealised renderings, and the painter is more than likely to have modelled his figures upon the recluses, sannyasis, yogis and the like whom he might have personally met or seen. There is clear indication of this in an observed 'portrait' of a sannyasi, inscribed with the name "Prem Gir", which comes from the same collection and is in the same hand: he is the one who the painter must have personally known or encountered, and he is seen with the same long grown, deeply curving nails that the sage Gautam in this painting has grown. The likelihood of the other sages being similarly modelled upon persons within the painter's own experience is palpable. None of this, however, takes away from the wonderful range of faces and stances that we see here, each painted as it is with a rare intensity: Vishwamitra with his jata-hair tied in a bun, seated on a deer skin, mouth covered with a mukh-patti; Jamadagni, seated cross-legged, head turned skywards almost as if frozen at that angle, telling upon a mala of prayer-beads; Gautam, nearly naked, long-bearded, dark complexioned, coarse thatches of hair marking the armpits, both hands, with long grown nails, raised above the head and locked; Vasishtha, young-looking, the only one in this group not sporting a beard, wearing a yellow garment round his loins, one hand firmly grasping a sacred vessel; Attri, dark-skinned, staring intensely ahead of himself, one hand in a gomukha-glove, evidently telling beads; Bharadwaj in a yogic asana, upside down with the weight of the body borne by head and two hands resting on the ground, legs raised in the air and crossed; and the dark-skinned Kashyapa, seated cross-legged but naked, his middle covered by a leopard skin draped across the lap, eyes closed while applying sacred ash-bhasma with one hand to his forehead. Each one of these singularly grave looking, inwardly turned, men is completely absorbed in what he is doing. No one talks to anyone else; in the centre of the circle that they form a pile of ashes silently smoulders; the traditional dhuni of the yogis. It is a still, quietly affecting image. How did the painter think of making it, one wonders? Was there an occasion? The only possible clue that one might have lurks in the three sheets of paper that the sage Vishwamitra holds in his hands or lie by his side. On them, in the Takri script, native of the hills, are inscribed a few lines, some of them repeated. In those the name of a prince, "Shri Mian Kailash De", occurs and the blessings of Shiva in one sheet, and of Hari in another, are invoked upon him. If the reference here is to a prince of Bandralta by this name, the painting can be dated to ca. 1700. And that prince might have been moved to commission this painting for some special occasion on which sacredness needed to be evoked: a yajna perhaps, or to coincide with his accession to the throne of that principality. One would never know. But, one can be sure that this is not the only manner in which rishis were visualised by painters. For a complete contrast, there is this wonderfully tranquil painting from a Devi series in which the rishi Markandeya sits in his ashrama, instructing a pupil of his who sits facing him, hands folded. The surroundings are lush green, birds quietly move about, lotuses bloom in the little pond at right. Great calm prevails, as great truths are being communicated.
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