Ramayana in Pahari Miniature Painting

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

Page 21

The Rāmāyana In Pahari Miniature Painting
About 20 leaves of this Rāmāyaṇa series have come to light so far. They are located in various Museums, like the Lahore Museum, Chandigarh Museum and Rietberg Museum (Zurich).
The similarities of this series with the Gita Govinda dated A.D. 1730 are its horizontal format (measuring 22 cm by 32 cm approximately with border and 17.5 cm by 27.2 cm approximately without border), the thick shining, dark-red border, the colour-scheme, the composition of the pictures, the iconography of Rāma or Kļsna, and Sitā or Rādha and the gopi, the flowering and sprouting trees and the landscape. Also the high horizon with the small line of white clouds over a thin line of blue sky, sometimes dramatically emphasized with curly and coloured clouds is a common feature in both the series. But inspite of the remarkable common point, the stages of development can be discerned in some refined details, like the treatment of the trees and the tendency in the Gita Govinda series to shading and soft expressions in the faces 25.
Parts of this Rāmāyana series were forinerly kept in the Central museum (Lahore). After the partition, the whole collection of this Museum was divided, and twelve leaves of this Rāmāyana series came to Chandigarh, whereas fifteen leaves remained in the Central Museum (Lahore). The nine leaves of the Rietberg Museum (Zurich) were acquired recently form a dealer who is said to have bought these miniatures in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Arts (Hyderabad) has, in its collection, a Rāmāyana miniature in a Basohli style dated to about 1720-30. The measurements of this leaf are about the same as those of the other leaves of this Rāmāyana series (being 20 cm by 31 cm with border and 16.1 cm by 26.9 cm without border). Also some stylistic details, like the dark red shining border, the idiom of the rocky hills, the trees in form of pyramidal bulks of leaves with white flower-bunches, the depiction of water in wavy lines, the individual plants and bunches of grass dispersed all over the ground and the hills, are also quite similar. A slight divergence in style is found in the depiction of the monkeys on the leaf from the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal collection. It looks as if the monkeys are wearing masks, tightly fitting to the body with just the small portion of the face open. Inspite of this divergence this miniature is kept within the sequence of Rāmāyaṇa leaves dealt with here.
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