The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry Part 15

Ill.u.s.tration to the _Bhagavata Purana_ Kangra, Punjab Hills, c. 1790 National Museum, New Delhi

With Plates 3 and 5, part of the series attributed to Purkhu.

Led by Nanda, the majestic figure in the front bullock-cart, the cowherds are moving a day's march across the River Jumna to enjoy the larger freedom of Brindaban. Their possessions--bundles of clothes, spinning-wheels, baskets of grain and pitchers--are being taken with them and mounted with Yasoda on a second cart go the children, Balarama and Krishna. With its great variety of stances, simple naturalism and air of innocent calm, the picture exactly expresses the terms of tender familiarity on which the cowherds lived with Krishna.

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PLATE 7

_Krishna milking_

Ill.u.s.tration to the _Bhagavata Purana_ Garhwal, Punjab Hills, c. 1800 G.K. Kanoria collection, Calcutta

Like Plate 4, an ill.u.s.tration of an isolated episode. Krishna, having graduated from tending the calves, is milking a cow, his mind filled with brooding thoughts. A cowgirl restrains the calf by tugging at its string while the cow licks its restive offspring with tender care. Other details--the tree clasped by a flowering creeper, the peac.o.c.k perched in its branches--suggest the cowgirls' growing love. The image of tree and creeper was a common symbol in poetry for the lover embraced by his beloved and peac.o.c.ks, thirsting for rain, were evocative of desire.

In style, the picture represents the end of the first great phase of Garhwal painting (c. 1770-1804) when romantic themes were treated with glowing ardour.

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PLATE 8

_The Quelling of the Snake Kaliya_

Ill.u.s.tration to the _Bhagavata Purana_ Kangra, Punjab Hills, c. 1790 J.K. Mody collection, Bombay

With Plates 3, 5 and 6, an example of Kangra painting in its most serene form.

Krishna, having defied the hydra-headed snake whose poison has befouled the River Jumna, is dancing in triumph on its sagging heads. The snake's consorts plead for mercy--one of them holding out bunches of lotus flowers, the others folding their hands or stretching out their arms in mute entreaty. The river is once again depicted as a surging flood but it is the master-artist's command of sinuous line and power of suffusing a scene of turmoil with majestic calm which gives the picture greatness.

Although the present study is true to the _Bhagavata Purana_ where the snake is explicitly described as vacating the water and meeting its end on dry land, other pictures, notably those from Garhwal[129] follow the _Vishnu Purana_ and show the final struggle taking place in the river itself.

[Footnote 129: Reproduced A.K. Coomaraswamy, _Rajput Painting_ (Oxford, 1916), Vol. II, Plates 53 and 54.]

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PLATE 9

_Balarama killing the Demon Pralamba_

Ill.u.s.tration to the _Bhagavata Purana_ Kangra, Punjab Hills, c. 1790 National Museum, New Delhi

A further example from the Kangra series, here attributed to Purkhu.

As part of his war on Krishna and young boys, the tyrant Kansa sends various demons to harry and kill them, the present picture showing four stages in one such attack. To the right, the cowherd children, divided into two parties, face each other by an ant-hill, Krishna with arms crossed heading the right-hand group and Balarama the left. Concealed as a cowherd in Krishna's party, the demon Pralamba awaits an opportunity of killing Balarama. The second stage, in the right-hand bottom corner, shows Balarama's party giving the other side 'pick-a-backs,' after having been vanquished in a game of guessing flowers and fruit. The third stage is reached in the top left-hand corner. Here Pralamba has regained his demon form and is hurrying off with Balarama. Balarama's left hand is tightly clutched but with his right he beats at the demon's head. The fourth and final stage is ill.u.s.trated in the bottom left-hand corner where Balarama has subdued the demon and is about to slay him.

The picture departs from the normal version, as given in the _Bhagavata Purana,_ by showing Balarama's side, instead of Krishna's, carrying out the forfeits. According to the _Purana_, it was Krishna's side that lost and since Pralamba was among the defeated, he was in a position to take Balarama for a ride. It is likely, however, that in view of the other episode in the _Purana_ in which Krishna humbles his favourite cowgirl when she asks to be carried (Plate 14), the artist shrank from showing Krishna in this servile posture so changed the two sides round.

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PLATE 10

_The Forest Fire_

Ill.u.s.tration to an incident from the _Bhagavata Purana_ Basohli, Punjab Hills, c. 1680 Karl Khandalavala collection, Bombay

Under Raja Kirpal Pal (c. 1680-1693), painting at Basohli attained a savage intensity of expression--the present picture ill.u.s.trating the style in its earliest and greatest phase. Surrounded by a ring of fire and with cowherd boys and cattle stupefied by smoke, Krishna is putting out the blaze by sucking the flames into his cheeks. Deer and pig are bounding to safety while birds and wild bees hover distractedly overhead.

During his life among the cowherds, Krishna was on two occasions confronted with a forest fire--the first, on the night following his struggle with Kaliya the snake when Nanda, Yasoda and other cowherds and cowgirls were also present and the second, following Balarama's encounter with the demon Pralamba (Plate 10), when only cowherd boys were with him.

Since Nanda and the cowgirls are absent from the present picture, it is probably the second of these two occasions which is ill.u.s.trated.

For a reproduction in colour of this pa.s.sionately glowing picture, see Karl Khandalavala, _Indian Sculpture and Painting_ (Bombay, 1938) (Plate 10).

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PLATE 11

_The Stealing of the Clothes_

Ill.u.s.tration to the _Bhagavata Purana_ Kangra, Punjab Hills, c. 1790 J.K. Mody collection, Bombay

Despite the Indian delight in sensuous charm, the nude was only rarely depicted in Indian painting--feelings of reverence and delicacy forbidding too unabashed a portrayal of the feminine physique. The present picture with its band of nude girls is therefore an exception--the facts of the _Purana_ rendering necessary their frank inclusion.

The scene ill.u.s.trated concerns the efforts of the cowgirls to win Krishna's love. Bathing naked in the river at dawn in order to rid themselves of sin, they are surprised by Krishna who takes their clothes up into a tree. When they beg him to return them, he insists that each should freely expose herself before him, arguing that only in this way can they convince him of their love. In the picture, the girls are shyly advancing while Krishna looks down at them from the tree.

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PLATE 12

_The Raising of Mount Govardhana_

Ill.u.s.tration to an incident from the _Bhagavata Purana_ Garhwal, Punjab Hills, c. 1790 National Museum, New Delhi

With Plate 7, an example of Garhwal painting and its use of smoothly curving line.

Krishna is lifting Mount Govardhana on his little finger and Nanda, the cowherds and cowgirls are sheltering underneath. The occasion is Krishna's slight to Indra, king of the G.o.ds and lord of the clouds, whose worship he has persuaded the cowherds to abandon. Incensed at Krishna's action, Indra has retaliated by sending storms of rain.

In the picture, Indra, a tiny figure mounted on a white elephant careers across the sky, goading the clouds to fall in torrents. Lightning flickers wildly and on Govardhana itself, the torn and shattered trees bespeak the gale's havoc. Below all is calm as the cowherds acclaim Krishna's power.

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PLATE 13