Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c11.4

c11.4

(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