Delving into the unknown

..to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub

— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Let us consider three paintings. The first, a folio that comes from the artists’ ateliers that were traditionally attached to the ruling house of Mewar at Udaipur. What one sees in it are fantastic creatures — gaja-simhas, literally ‘elephant-lions’ — roaming about in an imagined landscape. Elephants the painters of Mewar were inordinately fond of, and they would paint them at the slightest opportunity that came their way: rulers riding in processions, elephants in combat, errant elephants sought to be brought under control by hapless mahouts, especially favoured ones standing as if posing for a portrait, and so on. But here, in this work, there are no true elephants: their heads have been grafted on to the lithe, majestic bodies of lions. There are as many as five of them that one sees here. The landscape is in itself beautiful. Under an intense blue sky, Mughal style piled up rocks rise at the left; through undulating hills a thin stream of water emerges and keeps expanding; trees, part observed and part imagined, mingle with spidery bushes and spiky reeds. There are no human figures in sight, but everywhere gaja-simhas appear: one of them strides across a hill at the top; another raises his head at right, as if gazing at the one above; a pair appears at left, trunks curled, proud tusks piercing the space around them; and a fifth bends down at the edge of the stream to water himself. The forms are firm and resilient, and energy can be felt coursing under their delicately coloured skins. Fitted with those wings, they could take off in any direction, at any moment. The painting is, without doubt, rich, visually exciting. But where does this imagery come from, what source?

The second painting is from the Pahari region. One sees the great god, Vishnu, standing against a flat, orange background with only conventional, wispy clouds at the top marking the sky. The form of the deity is instantly recognisable. There he stands, body dark as the cloud — or, in a preferred description, of the colour of all space condensed — clad only in his favourite yellow garment, the pitavastra. There is profuse pearl and gold jewellery on the body: necklace, ear-rings, armlets, wristlets and anklets with tassels attached to them.

Wearing on his head a beautifully crafted golden crown topped by a diadem as it were of peacock-feathers, and holding in his four hands the ayudhasor attributes that one associates with him — shankha (conchshell); chakra (discus); gada (mace); and padma (lotus), the deity looks down, head gently bent. At his feet, in fact, touching them with folded hands, bends a priestly figure, — a rishi perhaps — body crouching, head poised to be laid at the feet of the Lord. Once again, the painting is striking: on the one hand on account of its simplicity and on the other because of the feeling of total reverence it is charged with. But who is the rishi, one wonders? And what exactly is the moment depicted?

The third work is again from Rajasthan. One sees in it a pair of hamsa birds by a lake in which lotuses are blooming, more, as is shrewdly observed, towards the edge of the water rather than where the water is deep. Quite beautifully rendered, the birds sport pink crests on their heads, the rest of their feathery forms snow-white in colour, barring the beaks and the legs which, again, are of the same pink as the crests. One of them — the one at right — stands in water, weight resting on one leg, even as it proudly looks up; the other one is looking for something in the water — or has it found it already? — as it hunches forward and cranes its neck. There are shells lying all around, most of them open, as also some pearls; in fact the bird at left has two in its beak, having found them.

The background is bare, almost sandy, with some iridescence in it; far at the back riserolling hills with sparse shrubbery on them. There are no humans in sight: hunters or watchers. The painting is simply about the two birds. Once again, one is entitled to wonder: if the birds, even though elegantly painted, do not appear the subject of some natural history studies, and if there is no evident reference — or is there one? — that one finds in them, what must have led the painters to pick them as their subject? It is not the fairest of questions to ask, but it still remains there, hanging in the air.

However, things begin to fall in place with the help of the brief, almost laconic, inscriptions that appear on the paintings themselves. The first two come apparently from some Book of Dreams — svapna-darshana, svapna-phala, or something similar — and the third from a Book of Omens, a shakunavali perhaps.

The text on the top margin of the painting with the gaja-simhas reads: "Success in all things undertaken; participation in royal or religious assemblies; gaining a wife; coming into money; these are the things indicated by (seeing in a dream) a lion form. No. 12. Auspicious."

The number indicates obviously that the painting comes from a series; and the word "auspicious" at the end suggests, as one knows well, that there are some dreams that are believed to be auspicious to have, and others that are not. Interestingly, however, the text mentions only ‘lions’: the gaja-simhas that one sees in the painting belong purely to the painter’s fantasy. The second painting has on its top margin just one word, loosely scrawled: "Narayan", which, of course, is another name by which Vishnu is known. Clearly, the scenes depicted in these two paintings could only have been seen in ‘dreams’, and not observed. The third one, however, seems to come from a Book of Omens — things that one sees with one’s own eyes — which lists sights which are then interpreted as portents or as foretelling things. These, like dreams, can again be broken up into ‘auspicious’ or ‘inauspicious’ categories. The text on this painting reads: "Victory; material gain; union with wife and children; gain in fame or glory. These are indicated by the sight of raja-hamsas. Auspicious. 44".

Paintings such as these lead us into a mystifying world: inexplicable, intuitive, and beyond reason. Pseudoscientific, as logic would say. But countless people believed in them then, in the centuries gone by, as they do now. Else, why would countless works like these have been painted?

There are no human figures in sight but everywhere gaja-simhas appear....The forms are firm and resilient, and energy can be felt coursing under their delicately coloured skins. Fitted with those wings, they could take off in any direction, at any moment. The painting is, without doubt, rich, visually exciting.

This article was published on December 22, 2013