The painting represents the greyish-blue complexioned Lord Rama
holding a bow, taller to his height, in his left hand, and an arrow,
in his right. Goswami Tulsidasa, the sixteenth century poet who
composed the epic Ramacharita Manasa, one of the two immortal poems,
the other being Valmiki’s Ramayana, on the life-story of Lord Rama,
the eldest son and the heir apparent of Ayodhya’s king Dasharatha,
wrote elaborating his image of Lord Rama : ‘Tulsi mastaka tab nabe
dhanusa-vana lo hatha’, that is, Tulsi’s head shall bow in devotion
only when he holds bow and arrow in his hands. Obviously, Tulsi
perceived him basically as the destroyer of evil manifest in the form
of Ravana, Lanka’s demon-king, and other evil powers, and his bow and
arrow were its instruments.
Obviously, the painter of this excellent masterpiece – a vision of
Lord Rama rendered on votive lines, seeks to represent what Tulsidasa
realised in his couplet. As for the bow the painter has used it
dually; on one hand it manifests the most essential, the
evil-destroying, aspect of Lord Rama’s personality perceiving it with
Tulsidasa as the tool of destroying evil, and on the other, uses it as
his aesthetic tool for balancing and framing his figure of Lord Rama.
A bow taller than his height not only frames his figure on the left
but with its red base fluted with gold’s strips delightfully balances
his sash identically dyed in red and worked with gold. For greater
visual effect he has let his sash trail on the ground. It is not by
over-sight that he has painted an arrow with a tiny size like a mere
symbol, not like a piece of weapon such as might have pierced the body
of mighty Ravana, obviously because he preferred minimising the bow’s
role as weapon and more as an aesthetic tool.
The painter has wondrously synthesised his modernism with the
tradition. In most of his medieval portraits Lord Rama is rendered in
‘pitambara’ – yellow ‘antariya’ or lower wear. Besides that in this
portrait his yellow of the ‘antariya’ has blended with it tints of
orange, a long sash, dyed in red and with golden border, lying on his
shoulder, flanking on sides and trailing to the ground, and a black
‘patka’ – waistband, with large breadth and richly worked with gold –
creating delightful contrast and effects, are certainly not the
features of his conventional imagery. Most exotic are his shoes with
quite high heels, stylistic toes and coloured leather tops outdoing
even the latest of the shoe-fashions.
A tall figure with perfectly modeled and balanced anatomy, a round
face glowing with divinity, deep thoughtful eyes, gentle features with
small lips, broad forehead with a Vaishnava ‘tilaka’ mark and a well
aligned neck define the image of Lord Rama. Though armed, the basic
perception of the image is sublime quiescence. Besides a gems’
embedded towering crown he has behind his face a large halo with
gold’s lustre. He has hung on his right shoulder his gold’s quiver
studded with precious stones containing arrows, and on his left, a
shoulder ornament/protective cover inlaid with rubies, emeralds and
other gems. A large flower-shaped buckle of gold embedded with
invaluable stones holds his waist-band. His figure has been further
adorned with richly conceived ornaments on neck, arms and wrists and
the characteristic Vaijayanti : the garland of fresh Parijata flowers,
on his breast.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.
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veces desde el 5th Oct, 2011
