Nala and Damayanti

The Naisadhacharita and the Kangra paintings

a) The Naishadhacharita

It is perhaps proper to add here a few words about one of the most famous poems on Nala's story after the Nalopakhyana of Mahabharata, upon the early part of which it is clearly based: the great kavya of the XIIth century, the Naishadhacharita by Sriharsa.

Sriharsa was a poet at the court of the King of Kanyakubja. Innumerable stories and legends testify to his great panditya, or scholarship. His father is said to have been defeated in a scholarly duel, shastrartha, by another poet, following which he charged his son with the task of avenging him. Sriharsa then went on acquiring knowledge ceaselessly and learning from every possible pandit till he felt confident to return to the court of his father's patron where he was recognized as the greatest of poets. Sriharsa is said to have produced a great many works but his most famous kavya is the Naishadhacharita. The story goes that the King wanted the poet to go to Kashmir to have his work approved by Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, who presided there in person. Sriharsa proceeded to Kashmir and there received Saraswati's blessings, but not before having a learned argument even with her.

Sriharsha's language is considered to be extremely sophisticated.

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The entire Naishadhacharita with its 22 cantos containing more than 20000 verses is an occasion for a dazzling exercise in the display of virtuosity. He employs chandas of the most complex variety. Of his encyclopaedic knowledge there is plenty of evidence throughout. One example will be sufficient for the reader to measure the dexterity of the writer: during Damayanti's Swayamvar, the goddess Sarasvati describes the four gods seated next to Nala. But since she does not wish to disclose their identity, she provides a description of each person in words which can have at least two meanings. When she describes Indra, for example, read in one way the verse is applicable to Indra, but read in another, it is equally descriptive of Nala.

However the most important point to note here is that the Naishadhacharita carries the story only through the honey moon at Nishadha. It starts and ends as a love story. Nala's loss of his throne, his vicissitudes and separation from Damayanti upto his final reunion with her and his reinstatement are absent. The fault of Nala, which gives the opportunity for Kali to enter him and wreck his life and happiness, never occurs. The poem has only kept the "fairy tale" aspect and the sringar rasa is the dominating flavour all throughout. The poet describes at great length the happiness of the young married couple and the text closes on a beautiful, scene of Nala and Damayanti looking at the moon frpm the veranda of their palace.

The reason we have chosen to refer to this poem in particular is because it has inspired a series of miniatures said to be amongst the most refined and delicate of all Indian paintings.

Of course the illustration of the Nala and Damayanti story did not start with the poem of Sriharsa. A Gujarati manuscript of the XVth century was based on a poem called Nalacampu of Trivikrama Bhatta. A Mahabharata manuscript of the the 16th century contains illustrations of the Nalopakhyana. But by far, the most well known series of paintings closely follows the Naishadhacharita text: this is a series of 48 drawings, 29 of which are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and form part of the great collection of Rajput pictures gathered by Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy. A second series based upon the same text has surfaced later and is presently in the Jammu Museum.

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b) The Coomaraswamy drawings

This series of drawings dates from the latter part of the 18th century and is attributed to painters of the Kangra state under the enlightened patronage of Raja Sansar Chand (1775 1823), a king who had many artists in his employ. Except for one or two, these pictures represent unfinished Kangra paintings similar to many others of their kind (perhaps master sketches kept in the family of the Pahari artists and which served as models, namoonas, for subsequent pictures). The series in fact consists largely of drawings exe9uted in bistre with a fine brush, and although colour is indicated in many of them they illustrate the art of pure drawing. Their style is known as "Kangra kalam"" (brush, style), and was at its height during the reign of this King.

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*According to Dr Ananda Coomaraswamy, the famous art historian, Rajput painting in general is the painting of Rajputana and part of Central India and Pahari, that is, the regions of the Punjab Himalayas and Garhwal, including the Kangra valley. Since Dr Coomaraswamy's work, much research has gone into identifying the diverse styles grouped under the general name of Rajput painting.

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Here is how Dr. Coomarawamy, who in 1910 was the first to draw attention to these master pieces, speaks of them: "Many things are noteworthy in these drawings. The human figure is drawn with astonishing facility in every possible seated or standing pose, indi cating immense practice and well stored memory on the part of the artists. The figures are alert and eager; whole groups are animated by a single sentiment. ... The quality of the brush outline is most alluring. It is swift and effortless. In many places it attains a singular simplicity; there is a fondness of forms bounded by almost geometrical curves, which again pass into nearly straight lines. ... It is indeed remarkable how apparently a simple outline, carried round a whole figure, without raising the brush, avails to suggest the living form beneath the drapery." Coomarawamy was reminded of the Buddhist frescoes, "The outline is continuous and made with long strokes of the brush, as at Ajanta." He was fascinated in particular by the drawing of the feminine figures: "... The great work of the school was to create a feminine type peculiar to itself, and of infinite charm; not robust, like the Rajasthani types, but slender, and mov ing with an irresistible grace, intentionally accentuated by the long flowing lines of the drapery. Nothing, indeed, is more characteristic of the style than its use of flowing, unbroken lines, not ingeniously calligraphic like later Persian, nor boldly allusive like those of the early Rajasthani school, but creating a pure melody.""" This supple grace of figures, Coomarswamy defines thus: "... every action is spontaneous and impulsive, and the whole energy of being enters into every movement. And thus the human figures of the Pahari painters are veritably god like, in the sense of Bharata, who says that the actions of the gods spring from the natural disposition of the mind, while those of men depend upon the conscious working of the will."

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*For Coomaraswamy, Rajput paintings (which he divided into two broad groups, the work produced in Rajasthan — Rajasthani, and the other pro duced in the Himalayan hill states — Pahari) was a separate development from the Mughal school and relatively free from its influences, emphasiz ing as it did the abstract and the ideal rather than the naturalistic and academic. In the course of his studies, he demonstrated the fact that all these paintings were a natural product of the so called Western Indian style, which in turn was clearly derived from classical Indian painting of the fifth century, thus establishing the essential continuity of Indian painting.

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Let us reflect one moment on this remark: the actions of the human beings in these paintings spring from the natural disposition of the mind What does it mean except that the body painted there is nothing but the direct representation of an inner state? Here we are touching upon the unique character of Indian painting and the peculiar appeal of this art, which springs from the remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn which was and psychic turn which was given to it by the pervading genius of Indian culture. As Sri Aurobindo says, "In the treatment of the human figure all corporeal filling in of the out line by insistence on the flesh, the muscle, the anatomical detail is minimised or disregarded: the strong subtle lines and pure shapes which make the humanity of the human form are alone brought into relief; the whole essential human being is there, the divinity that has taken this garb of the spirit to the eye, but not the superfluous physicality which he carries with him as his burden. It is the ideal psychical figure and body of man and woman that is before us in its charm and beauty. The filling in of the line is done m another way; it is effected by a disposition of pure masses, a design and coloured wave flow of the body, bhanga, a simplicity of content that enables the artist to flood the whole with the significance of the one spiritual emotion, feeling, suggestion which he intends to convey, his intuition of the moment of the soul, its living self experience." The "wave flow" of the body is best illustrated in the drawings mentioned above, as the reader can see in the few illustrations presented here.

c) The Jammu Museum paintings

The most important of the painted material and which has come to light relatively recently (in the mid fifties) is a set of forty seven

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paintings in the Karan Singh collection and exhibited at the Amar Mahal Museum of Jammu. Dr. Karan Singh recalls how an old painter Pandit Kunjial Vaid, living in Basohli, gave him the priceless series: "Although his health was advanced — he [Pandit Kunjial Vaid] must have been over 80 at the time — his eyes were keen and his speech clear. He met me with great affection and, to my surprise, placed before me a parcel wrapped in a large square handker chief. He undid the cloth and, one by one, showed me the exquisite paintings with loving care. He said that many foreigners had come to him wanting to buy the collection but he had not agreed to part with it. Now that he was old and had no children, he would like to present the paintings to me." Dr Karan Singh accepted the gift which is now displayed in the first hall of the Amar Mahal Museum in Jammu.

The achievement of the artist who created these marvels is beautifully described by Dr B.N. Goswamy's opening words in his book Pahari Paintings of the Nala Damayanti Theme: "Somewhere, among the many concerns of the Indian artist, there is also a concern with reaching the ultimate in the expression of delicacy of feeling. There are periods in which there is even a conscious search for the extreme: the idea becomes something of a gentle passion. One sees it in that inaudibly soft but clearly articulated note of music that trembles in the air for but a brief moment before it gets merged in the body of a raga. One sees it as Krishna massages the feet of Radha with the tenderest rose flower and as Radha puts out her hand to stop him, for its touch she says is too coarse for the soles of her feet. One sees it again in the poet bending down to hear the cataka, that delicate whisper of sound that the bud makes as it spreads out its petals in the fugitive moment of blossoming. One sees it also in the wispy softness of line in paintings like those in this book in which the brush seems barely to touch the surface, and forms look as if they have been 'breathed' upon paper."

Human forms that have been "breathed" on paper: what a striking expression to describe the art of the Indian painter. As Sri Aurobindo says, "In reality the shapes he paints are the form of things as he has seen them in the psychical plane of experience: these are the soul figures of which physical things are a gross representation and their purity and subtlety reveals at once what the physical masks by the thickness of its caring."

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E. Arnold's Translation

Edwin Arnold (1832 1904) was among the most highly regarded English poets of his day. After serving as principal of the government Sanskrit College in Pune, India, he joined the staff of the London Daily Telegraph as a journalist. He is best known for his book The Light of Asia, a blank verse epic about the life and teaching of Buddha. In his later years, he lived in Japan.

Edwin Arnold had great admiration for the epics of India. He writes, "There exist two colossal, unparalleled, epic poems in the sacred language of India, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana... These remarkable poems contain almost all the history of ancient India, so far as it can be recovered, together with such inexhaustible details of its political, social and religious life, that the antique Hindu world really stands epitomized in them." Arnold translated portions of the Mahabharata, and in particular the story of Nala and

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Damayanti, attempting, as he says "to reproduce the swift march of narrative and old world charm of the Indian tale". The reader will judge if this attempt was a successful one. We reproduce here a pas e from Arnold's translation. This extract recounts the return of Nala to the kingdom of Vidarbha. The news of Damayanti's second Swayarnvara has just reached Ayodhya, where Nala lives under the name of Vahuka and serves the king Rituparna as a charioteer.

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*These are spots where the hair curls round, as upon the crown of the human head.

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Bibliography

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