Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.142

c10.142

tion being Ms. Add. Or. 2821, nearly all of which have been cited in the plates volume of this work. The text by an anonymous poet, quoted in this series, has been the most popular text used by illustrators of rāgamālās, through several centuries. If the estimate of the date of the two miniatures in the Boston Museum (15.51, 15.53) is correct, the text of this anonymous poet must be earlier than 1630, that is to say, earlier than the text of Harivallabha, discussed above. The popularity of the anonymous text, (which could not be superceded by the numerous series of illustrations, which bear quotations from it, viz. (1) British Museum Ms. Add. Or. 2821, (2) Lala Sambhunath Collection, Jaipur, (3) Jaipur Museum Collection, (4) Ajit Ghose Collection (stray examples), (5) Collection of Mr. S. Gangoly, Baroda, stray examples (Plate LXXXI), (6) Author's Collection, (stray examples), (7) Lipperheid'sche Bibliothek, Berlin, 1474 (stray examples), and numerous stray examples in various private collections. In one or two instances dohās from this anonymous text have been cited on the back of the early rāga-mālā pictures e.g., Vasanta rāgiṇī, Metropolitan Museum (Plate LX, B). This would lend support to the assertion that in some cases, at least, the texts were added later. The text on the back of the Vasanta rāgiṇī which we reproduce on the page opposite is so clumsy and careless as to preclude a supposition of its being contemporary with the miniature. One peculiarity of the text under discussion is its independent and original treatment of the themes. While the versions of Harivallabha keeps to the main outlines of the pictures and also, invariably, to the significant vocabulary of the Sanskrit text, as we have pointed out, the anonymous text shows a complete detachment from the Sanskrit models, though conforming to essential iconographic details and particulars of emotive significances. There is no verbal correspondence with the vocabulary of Sanskrit text such as we meet with in the text of Harivallabha. This may be easily demonstrated by considering the three versions (one Sanskrit and two Hindī texts) cited in the descriptions to Vangālī rāgiṇī (Plate VIII). It will be seen that Harivallabha not only reproduces the imageries but actually borrows several words from the Sanskrit model (triśūla, karaṇḍa, vāma-hasta, taruṇārka-varṇa), which the anonymous text absolutely ignores. The author gives an independent version, altogether allowing his own imagination to weave pictures, imageries and details to realise the main essences of the themes. Thus, in calling up the picture of a Yoginī, a female ascetic, performing austerities, the poet makes her sit on a rug of deer-skin in a shining temple, or a monastery, situated in a lonely forest, where the ascetic has retired, away from the haunts of men. The picture of the forest called up by the poet includes the necessary details of a group of frisking monkey,¹ and a live lion seated near her (*maṭha siva tala siṃhaju vaithāī*). None of the Sanskrit texts suggests a lion—which is the poet's own independent contribution to complete the picture of a lonely forest. The lion is not an essential iconographic detail required by the original *dhyāna*-formulas, but an innovation of the poet whom the artist has slavishly followed. It follows, therefore, that the illustrators had for their literary guidance the Hindī version of this anonymous text, and not the Sanskrit text of the authoritative treatises. Indeed, with rare exceptions,² the illustrations invariably quote Hindī, but not Sanskrit texts. The popular demand for the Hindī texts naturally called for poetic efforts on the part of several versifiers who came forward with original *dohās* and *savayās* giving graphic word pictures of the emotive and dramatic features of the melodies for the benefit of the pictorial artists.