Ramayana in Pahari Miniature Painting

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

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The Rāmāyana In Pahari Miniature Painting
The most striking common feature throughout these leaves is the iconography of Rama and Lakṣmaṇa roaming around in the woods, (as all these leaves illustrate the aranya and sundarakanda). Both the princes are dressed in a short skirt made out of leaves and a leafy hat with a small stalk on top. It looks as if the head is covered with a flower, plucked and kept upside-down. Hanumana with his white body, darkish snout and alert-looking wide-open eyes has a three-pointed crown, ornamented bands on lower and upper arms and striped shorts. He has the same appearance throughout these Rāmāyaṇa leaves, sometimes as a companion and adviser to Rama, and at other times as an active adventurer on his own. The peculiar shape of the hills, shown as high vertical fingertiplike clusters covered with tiny bundles of grass, seem to have originated from a similar creative source. There is one Rāmāyaṇa leaf in the Cleveland Museum of art (Cleveland) which is similar in its details. But the eyes of Rama, Lakṣmaṇa and Hanumana are longish and thin in shape. The expression in the face of Hanumana and the depiction of hills display some Mankot-like features. So the attribution of this miniature to the Rāmāyaṇa of ca. 1720 might be somewhat doubtful. On the other hand, the Mankot and Basohli courts were closely related through marriage ties. This could account for the Mankot influences on the Basohli style 26. The figure of Hanumana has slight resemblance to the mask-like depiction of the monkeys in the leaf from the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal collection. The individual plants and bunches of grass in the hills too, look very similar.
Due to its nearness in style with the Basohli Gita Govinda, this Rāmāyaṇa series was most likely created in the area of Basohli. From the large scale of its production and the high quality of execution, we can assume that the illustrations were carried out by a royal atelier, under royal patronage. From its style, it could be established that the place of its production was probably the royal court of Basohli. The close connection between Guler and Basohli, which had existed earlier, became much more strong and obvious after the marriage-ties of the two rulers, Raja Govardhan Chand of Guler and Raja Medini Pal of Basohli who married each other's sister. As the atmosphere of the Vaisnava bhakti cult was prominent in both the ruling house, it is most likely that there was a connection between this event of marriage and the completion of the Gita Govinda set27. This probably explains some of the influences from the Guler style that appear in the Rāmāyaṇa of ca.
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