Ramayana in Pahari Miniature Painting

Author(s): Jutta Jain
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 15

The Rāmāyaṇa In Pahari Miniature Painting
displaying mainly a lyrical atmosphere and softness of toning and outline; and secondly the northern group of Jammu' with a more coarse and wild style. Based upon this first rough classification consequently more systematic inquieries into the distinguishing features of each style have been prepared subsequently.
The earliest documents of Pahari painting that came to light could be dated to the early 17th century. There are various theories about the origins of Pahari miniature painting. One view is that Pahari painting, which is to be considered as courtly or royal art, most probably had its beginnings in the folk paintings of that area. Folk art is part of the daily life and needs of the villages. The producers themselves do not regard their creations as 'high art', because they prepare them as objects of daily use and make them anew whenever there is a demand for them. Although no testimonies of early folk paintings of this area have come down to us as yet, a few examples of wood and stone carving throw some light on a relationship between these and the later miniature paintings. A closeness can be observed in the style of miniatures and the carvings of the temple in the Nurpur Fort, the temple of Ardhanāriśvara at Mandi and of a stone-stele with the depiction of a royal hero from Bilaspur.?
The painters, who were experts in their artistic crafts, belonged, like most other craftsman in traditional India, to a rather low social strata. Abul Fazl-i-Allami's quotation in his encyclopaedic work Ain-i-Akbari might throw light on the general view on craftsmen that existed in that period:
"The sudra is incapable of any other privilege than to serve these three castes, ..He may be a painter, goldsmith, carpenter, and trade in salt, honey milk, buttermilk, clarified butter and grain."
Rarely the painters were educated in a formal manner by classical scriptures like the other higher castes. The craftsmen and painters gained their knowledge and skills from their elders as a matter of tradition. When the painters were commissioned to illustrate religious and mythological text, they usually worked in collaboration with a pandit, the scholar of traditional learning. The pandit would explain the text, which was to be illustrated, to the painter. The colophon of the Rāmāyaṇa series by painter Ranjha of A. D. 1816 (in Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi ) makes it clear what kind of relation had existed between the pandit and the painter :
Jain Education Intemational