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A note on Caurapanchasika

By Kiattipoom Nantanukul, Shatavisha Mustafi and Ankita Deb

Secular Painting during Sultanate Period Illustrated texts of the Chaurapanchasika in the N.C Mehta Collection Ahmedabad, many of them secular, and of quite different genre, were commissioned by the Muslim and Hindu aristocracy of the sixteenth century: ‘Even now, / I remember her eyes / trembling, closed after love, / her slender body limp, / fine clothes and heavy hair loose / a wild goose / in a thicket of lotuses of passion’. Thus rhapsodized the eight-century Kashmiri poet Bilhana about his beloved Campavati in the Caurapancasika (Fifty Verses of a Love Thief). The paintings in these manuscripts are depictions of great amorous metaphor. The eroticism is embedded so intricately that they have to be studied in great detail to understand the artist’s portrayal of eroticism. The Caurapancasika inspired a major series of paintings that became the benchmark for pre-Mughal art, not least because this set was the first to be discovered by modern scholars. Over the years many more have come into light that give us an ever clearer idea about painting in North India on the eve of Mughal conquest. A ‘transparent’ narrative device in the Caurapancasika, which tells the story by placing the aristocratic hero and heroine in an everyday architectural interior, becomes a long-lasting convention. (Partha Mitter 2001: 102) The geographical origins of the style are highly disputed. It could be that the general Caurapanchasika style may not be exclusively royal in execution or origin. The inscription found in a manuscript dated 1516 is of a patron who commissioned named ‘Bhanadasa Chaudhuri of Chandrapuri’, while not otherwise known his name indicates he was the headman or foreman of a small administrative block. (Milo Cleveland Beach, 1992) Thus the circulation of such a painting style or the artist in question suggests the popularity of the style and its circulation that this style evolved and attributed to later Pahari paintings of the Basholi style in the 17th and the 18th century as well. The painting of the Lovers Approaching is one such example of the use of blank space, dilated pupils. There are still remains from the triangular torso and the subjective depiction of planes. Caurapancasika in Rajput Kingdom In the eighteenth century, as political turmoil followed the dismemberment of the Mughal empire, the Hill States, developed into a cloistered fairly-tale world, where men were imagined as perpetually elegant and women eternally enchanting, poised, and aristocratically aloof. As suggested by the conventions used in an illustrated Devi Mahatmya text from Kangra (1552), the Caurapancasika style had arrived in the hills by the sixteenth century. From this evolved the recognizable Pahari style in Basohli during the reign of Kirpal Pal (1678-95). Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari, a Caurapancasika tradition of depicting open pavilions and figures with ‘staring eyes’, but now the range of colours has become richer in subject and ‘hotter’ in colour (for example the use of red to intensify the subject. (Partha Mitter 2001: 151)

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Illustrated manuscript from Caurapanchasika series Description: the heroine’s triangular torso, dilated pupils (the Sanskrit poetic metaphor of fish-shaped eyes as a mark of beauty) grey-blue patterned skirt, and chequered bedspread follow Jain conventions but the new element is the division of the picture into several planes by the use of Sultanate architecture: an open roof-top pavilion, projecting eaves with brackets that looks like the makar, and crenellations in profile, the pavilion itself surrounded by flowering trees. The subject can be that of the Nayeka missing her beloved, the empty bed, the bees symbolizes how she is misses her beloved. (Partha Mitter 2001: 103) The odhni (which here is the transparent piece of cloth) is used by mostly the females; it thus creates a translucent illusion with the body, thus enhancing the sensuality in the figures.

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Description: To be noted the similarity in pattern in the nayeka’s lower garment and the bed spread, especially when the tapestry is designed differently. Can it be assumed that it is a post sex scene where she wrapped herself in the same and appears to talk to her mate? Also to be noted the two pillows, in the previous painting, there is one pillow. The conversation here is highlighted hence the red background. Description: Radha and Krishna in Rasamanjari by Bhanudatta, Basohli, c1670 The division in architecture, demarking the private and public space, the open door in the closed space shows space beyond. No designs or calligraphy of significance on the margins. The designs on the tapestry are to be noted.