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Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c11: Pictorial Motifs

Rāgas and Rāginīs: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c11

Language
English

Pictorial Motifs

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That rāga-mālā pictures have been painted, (in different parts of Northern India), whether in relation to specific Hindī texts, or independently, throughout the centuries right up to the nineteenth, is amply borne out by the large number of surviving miniatures. The demand for these specimens of “visualized music” must have been continuous, and wide-spread, and, in order to meet the demand, skeleton drawings (*khākās*, pricked drawings), and other outline sketches from the patterns designed by gifted artists were used by lesser artists who found it profitable to meet the popular demand. An interesting series of skeleton drawings (not pricked outlines), from the Tagore Collection are collected on Plate CXIII and other examples are cited on other plates for purposes of comparison (Plates I-A, XIII-B). On the drawings in the Tagore collection are inscribed in Hindī and Persian, the names of the rāginīs, with indications and suggestions for the colour schemes. They must have been the basis of finished miniatures, although no finished specimen corresponding to these particular designs, has yet been traced. The most interesting of these series is the one representing Hāṃvirī (Plate LXLVIII-C) which has helped to identify the well-known miniatures (Plate LXLVIII, A and B), not, hitherto, recognized as illustrations of the rāginī. The drawing for Bhairo (Plate I, A), also helps us to identify an analogous drawing (Boston Museum, CCXI, No. 17.2822) as an illustration of the melody. The example in the author’s collection (Plate XIII-B) is perhaps the finest specimen, both in its elaborate pattern and impressive setting.

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Materials are not adequate for a demonstration of the processes by which familiar scenes and experiences in life were adopted and developed and utilized into patterns and designs for visualizing the Indian melodies. But one, or two suggestions may be made how characteristic scenes and themes may have been worked out and idealized into a pattern for a rāgiṇī picture. The three examples of Kānaḍā rāgiṇī cited on Plate L, seem to indicate the three stages in which, a hunting melody, originally used by attendant Shikāris (hunters) helping a Prince in his elephant-hunts, later developed into the rich but plaintive strain of the melody now recognized under the name of Kānaḍā. Possibly, when the prince killed an elephant, the attendants stood up to salute the hunter and broke into congratulatory cheers, in some crude minstrel-songs (cāraṇagītis), in which the plaintive groans of the dying animal mingled its deeply moving notes of sorrow, which perhaps still linger in its refined, finished, and developed structure, now known to us. In the final ‘picture’ that it evolved, it obliterated all traces of its origin, and in this developed picture (Plate L-A) it is interpreted as a song of inspiration to Kṛṣṇa (Kānar= Kānorā) as He starts to ride out from His palace to kill the demon gajāsura.¹ The sources of the pictorial motifs have been forgotten, defaced, or obliterated in most cases. But we shall endeavour to indicate the origins of the motif woven into the theme of the Toḍī rāgiṇī. Possibly, the melody came originally from the peasants' field. Very probably, it was a melody sung by the wife, or daughter of the peasant who watched the paddy fields, (as they still do today, from sunrise to sunset; perched on a bamboo frame), chiding away the deer, and other animals which strayed into the fields, in groups, to eat up the standing crop, before it was ready to be shorn. Perhaps, the farmer's daughter, weaned away the encroaching depredator, by the music of her primitive lute, which attracted the deer, and kept them away from mischief. Some such picture, is called up by many stray passages in ancient poetical literature. We seem to have vivid pen-pictures of deer dropping the food they were chewing in the crop-fields in their depredatory raids, under the enchanting strains of music. Thus in Śrī-Harṣ's “Nāgānandam,” in the dialogue of Ātreya and Jīmūtavāhana

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(1) Like Hercules, Kṛṣṇa is credited with a series of brave and adventurous deeds of valour and heroism, one of which is the vanquishing of a demon in elephant's form (gajāsura). Another of the exploits of Kṛṣṇa is worked into the theme of Sāraṅga-rāga (Plate LXL).

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(Act 1), this appears to be the identical picture suggested: “Ātreya: ‘Even the deer prick up their ears, and listen to the strain with their eyes closed, while from their mouth falls the half-chewed grass.’”¹ That the depredatory deer were attracted by the songs, or the music of the dames who kept watch over the paddy fields, is suggested by a passage in Subandhu’s Vāsavadattā: “With herds of deer delighted by the songs of happy female guardians of the rice.”² This seems to be graphically pictured in the miniature (Plate XV-C), where we find the graceful guardian of the paddy-field, attracting the herds by her music, and alluring them away from the young shoots of paddy which will yet take a long time to mature. The partiality of the deer for music, was an old recognized piece of zoological knowledge, and very soon passed into poetic conventions, of which several applications are met with in Sanskrit literature. Thus in Vāsavadattā, we read: “With herds of deer delighted by the notes of songs of kinnarīs (satyrs) close by.”³ Other examples of the convention occur in the Kathā-Sarit-Sāgara⁴ and in two passages in Hemachandra’s Pariśiṣṭa parvan:⁵

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¹ (Act 1), this appears to be the identical picture suggested: “Ātreya: ‘Even the deer prick up their ears, and listen to the strain with their eyes closed, while from their mouth falls the half-chewed grass.’”

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² Vāsavadattā (Gray’s Translation, Columbia University, 1913), p. 135-36, Text (at p. 192, line 8) “Hṛṣta-kalama-gopikā-gīta-sukhita-mṛga-yuthe.”

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³ Gray’s translation, p. 126.

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⁴ In the anecdote of Harivara and Anaṅgaprabhā (Penzer’s Edition, Vol. IV, p. 152).

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⁵ “Pāṭaliputra-nagare yatra yatra jajou sa tu| Tatra tatra yayuḥ pourāḥ gītākṛṣṭāḥ kuraṅgavat||” 39 (Bib. Indica, Edition, IX, 39). “Rājāpi tasyāstādṛkṣa-niḥ kṣobhatvena vismitah| Utkarṇo’ bhut kathām śrotum gītim mṛga ivoccakaiḥ”|| 194 Ibid, III, 194.

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(1) Nāgānandam translated by B. H. Wortham, London, p. 28.
(2) Vāsavadattā (Gray’s Translation, Columbia University, 1913), p. 135-36, Text (at p. 192, line 8) “Hṛṣta-kalama-gopikā-gīta-sukhita-mṛga-yuthe.” On this passage, the commentator Sivarām (Hall’s edition, p. 288) glosses ‘kalama-gopikā’ as ‘Śāli-samrakṣakā’, that is, ‘guardians of the paddy fields’.
(3) Gray’s translation, p. 126. Text (at page 187, line 9): “Samāsanna-kinnari-gita (Śravaṇa-ramamāṇa) ruru-visarena.” [266].
(4) In the anecdote of Harivara and Anaṅgaprabhā (Penzer’s Edition, Vol. IV, p. 152). Text: “Sa tena gīta-śavdena śrutena harino yathā| Akṛṣṭo’ bhyapatattatra rathamumucya kevalah||” 197.
(5) “Pāṭaliputra-nagare yatra yatra jajou sa tu| Tatra tatra yayuḥ pourāḥ gītākṛṣṭāḥ kuraṅgavat||” 39 (Bib. Indica, Edition, IX, 39). “Rājāpi tasyāstādṛkṣa-niḥ kṣobhatvena vismitah| Utkarṇo’ bhut kathām śrotum gītim mṛga ivoccakaiḥ”|| 194 Ibid, III, 194.

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“Wherever Kunāla went, the citizens of Pāṭaliputra followed like deer attracted by music.” “They pricked up their ears to hear his words, like deer anxious to listen to music.” These poetic conventions have also their practical application in the methods employed to capture gazelles which is described by Alberuni: “I myself have witnessed that in hunting gazelles they had caught them with the hand. One Hindu even went so far as to assert that he, without catching gazelles, would drive it before him and lead it straight into the kitchen. This however, rests, as I believe I have found out, simply on the device of slowly and constantly accustoming the animals to one and the same melody. Our people, too, practise the same when hunting the ibex, which is more wild than even the gazelle. When they see the animals resting, they begin to walk-round them in a circle, singing one and the same melody so long until the animals are accustomed to it. Then they make the circle more and more narrow, till at last they come near enough to shoot at the animals which lie there in the perfect rest.”¹

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This practice of hunting deer by the lure of music is recorded in a picturesque Hindī verse, in the form of the deer’s wail in which the animal hungry for the music expresses itself ready to sacrifice its body in lieu of the prize of a musical treat: “When a single leaf rustles, I fly to the island of Ceylon; (but having heard the notes of your flute, I have offered to you my head as a present; you can sell my horns and turn them into coins, and roast my meat to eat, take my skin to make into rugs, but O! do please treat me to the music of your flute!”²

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Sometimes old legends and folk-stories have been adopted and worked into the themes of rāga-mālā pictures. Thus, an old snake legend has provided the theme for the Āhirī rāginī.³

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(1) E. Sachau, “Alberuni’s India,” London, 1910, p. 195.
(2) “Ek patra yav khadkhadāye, ham bhāge simhal ka dvīp| Suṅke terā venusvara merā śir diyā vakśīs|| Sing necke kouḍi karanā mās payāyke khāo| Cāmdā leke āsan kijiye venukā svar sunāo”||
(3) Coomaraswamy, Catalogue of Boston Museum, Rajput The practice of visualising musical compositions in pictorial forms is no more confined to India. During the last few years a few European artists have made attempts to set down famous master-pieces of music into visualized pictures. The "Twenty-four Preludes" of Chopin have received pictorial interpretations by Robert Spies, an English artist.¹ A few years earlier, Miss Pamela Colman Smith exhibited in London, a series of pictorial drawings, interpreting famous musical pieces, which included Panderwski's "Chant du Voyage", Chopin's "Prelude No. 4", César Franck's "Symphony", Schumann's "Kinder-scenen" and Debussy's "Granada", and other pieces.² Yet, another series of illustrations of musical master-pieces were exhibited by Miss Juliet Williams at the Aeolian Hall in 1926, which included visualized versions of Bach's 'Concerto in E', Chopin's "Berceuse", Debussy's "L'Après-midi d'un Faune", and Borodin's "Unfinished Symphony."³

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¹ His illustrations were published, with accompaniment of poems by Laura Vulda, in French and English versions in the monthly journal, now defunct, called "Kosmos," Calcutta, 1916, Second year, No. 18.

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² Her pictures were described by the Hon Mrs. Forbes-Sempill in an article published in the Illustrated London News, 1927. See also the article 'Seeing sound' in the Statesman, Calcutta, 6th March, 1927.

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³ A selection from her pictures are reproduced in the Sketch, London, November 10, 1926, at page 278.

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Dr. Bake has cited the Latin verse composed by Monk Adam of Fulda (15th century) descriptive of the character of different musical modes. "There are even images of the different modes with inscriptions that run: "This mode is the first as far as the singing of songs full of melody is concerned. That which follows is the second in rank and importance. The third portrays the suffering and glorification of Christ. Then follows the fourth mode; its chants portray sorrow." The statuettes represent female figures in different attitudes and of different expressions. Consequently, it is

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Painting, Part V, p. 99; Journal, Punjab Historial Society, IV, 2, 1916, p. 118.

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only the later development which has estranged us from the basic idea, and makes us stare at the idea of portrayed rāgas and rāgiṇīs in Indian Art. The classical Indian system at its height presents the beautiful spectacle of something absolutely perfect.”¹

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(1) Dr. A. A. Bake: “Different Aspects of Indian Music,” *Indian Art and Letters* New series, Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1st issue for 1934, pp. 68-69

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