Pardah and portrayal: Rajput women as subjects, patrons, and collectors

Artibus Asiae

Volumn 62 PART 2, Issue , 2002, Pages 247-280

  Aitken, Molly Emma ^a  

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EID: 60950649899     PISSN: 00043648     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3250267     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. Concubines of the highest status, the pardayats, lived in the zanānā and kept pardah. Varsha Joshi, Polygamy and Purdah: Women and Society among Rajputs (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1995), 120
2. There are scattered references to women's patronage in the scholarly literature. For instance, there is the well-known example of the 1730 colophon which, according to the latest scholarship, names the "Lady Malini" of "good conduct" as the patron of the painter Manaku's Gita Govinda. See B.N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers and Museum Rietberg Zurich, 1992), 241-242
3. See also paintings of a queen in the Guler style, possibly by Nainsukh, two of which are reproduced in Vishakha Desai, Life at Court: Art for India's Rulers, 16th-19th Centuries (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1985), cat. nos. 67, 68
4. Naval Krishna has also published an entry from a 1697-1698 Bikaner court record which documents a Sisodīyā Rānī giving two portraits ("Sisodaniji ri Nazar") to the Bikaner ruler (though, as Krishna suggests, the entry could be interpreted to mean a gift of "nazar" given to the queen). See Naval Krishna, "Painting and Painters in Bikaner: Notes on an Inventory Register of the 17th Century," in Indian Painting: Essays in Honour of Karl J. Khandalavala (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995), 254-280
5. The inventory is located in the Rajasthan State Archives, Udaipur branch
6. A note on transliteration: I have followed the transliterations used in R.S. McGregor, Outline of Hindi Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). I have used these symbols to transliterate titles, the names of people, and foreign words, but not the names of places
7. The Jaipur Dastur Qaumwar, Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner
8. Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner
9. Molly Aitken, "The Practiced Eye: Styles and Allusions in Mewar Painting" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2000), 152-202
10. Recent articles in English on the subject of portraiture include Vishakha Desai, "Timeless Symbols: Royal Portraits from Rajasthan," in The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity, ed. Karine Schomer, Joan L. Erdman, Deryck O. Lodrick, Lloyd I. Rudolph (New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1994), 313-342
11. and B.N. Goswamy, "Essence and Appearance: Some Notes on Indian Portraitute," in Facets of Indian Art, ed. Robert Skelton et al. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986), 193-202
12. Ascribed to Biśan Dās, ca. 1610-1615, Museum of Fine Art, Boston (Francis Ba(New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies rtlett Donation of 1912 and Picture Fund), acc. no. 14.657. Reproduced in a number of places: Milo C. Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600-1660 (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1978), pl. 15
13. Stuart Cary Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1978), pl. 16
14. Amina Okada, Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992), 161-162
15. For instance, Abu'l Hasan's painting of a woman holding a rifle, probably dated 1612-1613, Raza Library, Rampur, Inv. H.1021
16. The woman is now generally thought to be Nūr Jahān. It has been reproduced in several places, including Milo C. Beach, Mughal and Rajput Painting, The New Cambridge History of India, 1: 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), fig. 69
17. In addition, Wheeler Thackston has reproduced a jharoka portrait of a woman who may be Nūr Jahān in The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (Washington D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art/ Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1999), 368. The painting is from a private collection. By contrast with the usual, more beautified female faces of Mughal painting, this face is unusually forceful, with, I find, an odd touch of resemblance to Jahangir in the mouth and chin
18. Ellen Smart, "A Mid-Seventeenth-Century Painting of Jahanara Begum," paper presented at the American Council for Southern Asian Art Conference, May 12-14, 2000, Philadelphia, PA
19. For example, see Joachim Bautze, Indian Miniature Paintings, c. 1590-c. 1850 (Amsterdam: Galerie Saundarya Lahari, 1987), cat. no. 40
20. Museum Rietberg Zurich, Switzerland, RVI 1069. Georgette Boner et al., Sammlung Alice Boner: Geschenk an das Museum Rietberg Zürich (Zurich: Museum Rietberg Zurich, 1994), cat. no. 131
21. owe this example to Eberhard Fischer, who sent me a copyof the image after reading a draft of this article. The image was also published in Robert Skelton, Indian Miniatures from the 15th to the 19th Centuries (Venezia: N. Pozza, 1961), 38, cat. no. 15. The inscription, on the bottom margin of the front, reads: "Huramā pātsāh kī 5."
22. Museum Rietberg Zurich, Switzerland, RVI 1098
23. Georgette Boner et al., Sammlung Alice Boner, cat. no. 134. Again, I must thank Eberhard Fischer for bringing this example to my attention
24. For example, a portrait, from the Baroda Museum, inv. P.G. 5a.85, of Sawāī Mādho Simcombining dot belowh of Jaipur with a queen and a young child. Published in O.C. Gangoly, Critical Catalogue of Miniature Paintings in the Baroda Museum (Baroda: Government Press, 1961), pl. XXVII A
25. and in Mulk Raj Anand, Album of Indian Paintings (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1973)
26. Also, a portrait of Rām Simcombining dot belowh of Amber presenting jewels to a woman in the zanānā, reproduced in Catherine Glynn, "Evidence of Royal Painting for the Amber Court," Artibus Asiae 56, 1/2 (1996), fig. 4
27. The assumption is generally that a picture of a woman, if it was a portrait, must have portrayed a courtesan or dancing girl. For instance, Pratapaditya Pal writes: "... both in Muslim and Hindu elite societies women led a sheltered life and rarely revealed themselves before strange males. Thus, there was no question of their portraits being taken, unless they were favourite dancing girls, musicians, or courtesans. Realistic portraiture of individual women of either the Mughal or Rajput families is rare indeed.... Only one depiction of a woman is included here as a possible portrait, almost certainly of a beautiful courtesan." Pratapaditya Pal, Divine Images, Human Visions: The Max Tanenbaum Collection of South Asian and Himalayan Art in the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1997), 145-146
28. Mewar inventory, Rajasthan State Archives, Udaipur branch, 410-434. The term "maherya" is used to categorize images of women in many places throughout the Jaipur suratkhānā records
29. John Seyller has observed the comparatively high prices given to portraits in Rajasthan in his recent essay "For Love or Money: The Shaping of Historical Painting Collections in India," in Intimate Worlds: Indian Paintings from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, ed. Dariell Mason (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), 16-17. He also points out that, at Mewar, formal portraits tended to be assigned higher prices than less formal portraits. As he himself notes, however, valuations were anything but systematic. The Mewar inventory I have studied (Rajasthan State Archives, Udaipur branch) includes many instances of formal portraits that were assigned values of one or two rupees, so it does not obviously bear out Seyller's conclusions on formal vs. informal portraiture. Nevertheless, it does provide evidence of certain overall trends, among them that paintings of women were generally valued lower than paintings of kings, i.e. more consistently at prices of a rupee or two as compared with five, ten, or more for royal portraits. A systematic study of prices in the Mewar jotdān inventory (Rajasthan State Archives, Udaipur branch) would no doubt help address these questions of painting valuation
30. For some reason, the majority of these entries date to the later half of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century
31. Keśava Dās, The Rasikapriya of Keshavadasa, trans. K.P. Bahadur (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972), 31
32. An "mh" conjunct is often used interchangeably in these documents with "mah." Thus one finds both "mahārā nī" and "mhārānī."
33. Āśvina, sudi 5, saṁvat 1840 (1784 CE). From here on, I have translated the Rajasthani names for the lunar months into the conventional Hindi terms. For instance, the month of Āśvina, in the Jaipur records, is called "āsoj" and the month Kārtika is called "kāti" in the records, but I shall use the names Āśvina and Kārtika here
34. Mahārānī Chandrāvat bought a portrait of her husband by the artist Rāmjī in 1780 (Māgha, vadi 11, saṁvat 1837)
35. Mahārānī Chundāvat's mother purchased paintings by Sahīb Rām in 1765 (Bhādrapada, sudi 1, saṁvat 1822). A Rātcombining dot belowhorcombining dot below queen bought portraits of her husband (the king) and his predecessors by Govindrām in 1801 (Kārtika, vadi 11, saṁvat 1858)
36. The Vikāwat Rānī was Mahārājā Jagat Simcombining dot belowh's first wife. She presented twenty-seven paintings to the court between 1804-06 (Vaiśākha, vadi 1, saṁvat 1861-63); these included two portraits of her husband, and four male nobles, Jīva Rāja Palīvāl (2), Tcombining dot belowhakur Syo Dās (1), and Tcombining dot belowhakur Syo Dās's son Syaṁbhu Dās (1)
37. Aitken, "The Practiced Eye," 152-202
38. Mārgaśīrscombining dot belowa, vadi 1, saṁvat 1820. The entry appears within a larger list of eight paintings that Mahārājā Mādho Simcombining dot belowh presented in "inām" ("rewards") to a variety of his courtiers. Of these eight paintings, seven were portraits of Mādho Simcombining dot belowh and one was a picture of a woman. Here, the records treat the Rānī simply as one among a group of honored courtiers
39. The court records from which I am drawing my conclusions reflect royal concerns and reveal only an aspect of what may have been a broader and slightly different picture of women as viewers and patrons. Relevant are Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's remarks on archival sources in "The Rānī of Simur," in Europe and its Others, vol. I, Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature, July 1984, ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen, Diana Loxley (Colchester: University of Essex, 1985), 146: "As the historical record is made up, who is dropped out, when, and why?.... The Rānī [of Simur] emerges only when she is needed in the space of imperial production." One might describe the records I examine here as belonging to the space of Mewar and Jaipur monarchal production
40. See, for instance, 'Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama of 'Inayat Khan: An Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Compiled by His Librarian, trans. A.R. Fuller, ed. W.E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 185 and 192
41. Andrew Topsfield mentions a series of portraits of mahārā ncombining dot belowās that the Mewar painter Sāhājī presented to Mahārāncombining dot belowā Arī Simcombining dot belowh shortly after his accession. See Andrew Topsfield, Paintings from Rajasthan in the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1980), 125
42. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or The Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, 1829, 3 vols., ed. William Crooke (London: Humphrey Milford/Oxford University Press, 1920), 358
43. Mewar inventory, 754-756. Śyāmaldās often described large painted court scenes to supplement his accounts of events at Mewar
44. See Kavīrājā Śyāmaldās, Vīr Vinod, 2 vols. (Udaipur: Rajayantralaya, 1886)
45. Tod, Annals and Antiquities, 358
46. For two of these paintings and more information on the group, see Desai, Life at Court, cat. nos. 67, 68
47. B.N. Goswamy is the principal authority on Nainsukh and has published extensively on the artist and his portrayals of Mahārājā Balwaṅt Simcombining dot belowh. See B.N. Goswamy, Nainsukh of Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill-State, Artibus Asiae Publishers Supplementum 41 (Zurich: Museum Rietberg Zurich, 1997)
48. Eberhard Fischer and B.N. Goswamy, Indian Miniatures: Paintings by Nainsukh of Guler, Works from the Pahari Region of the 18th Century in the Collection of the Museum Rietberg Zurich (Zurich: Museum Rietberg Zurich, 1999)
49. Reproduced in Goswamy, Nainsukh of Guler, cat. nos. 74, 73, 79, and 45-49 respectively and belonging, respectively, to the following collections: Museum Rietberg Zurich, acc. no. RVI 1552
50. Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, acc. no. 33.110 and acc. no. 33.108; Indian Museum, Calcutta, acc. no. 14149/655 and acc. no. 14145/662; Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, acc. no. 419 (25) and acc. no. 419 (24)
51. Keśava Dās, The Rasikapriya, 63
52. Natalie Harris Bluestone, for instance, has explored the notion of a "female gaze" by looking at women's responses to a relief attributed to the female sculptor Properzia de' Rossi (1490-1530). Though she believes men and women to be influenced by the notion of the sculptor's gender, she finds women's responses to de' Rossi's relief to have diverged enormously, belying any notion of an essential, quantifiable female gaze. See Natalie Harris Bluestone, "The Female Gaze: Women's Interpretations of the Life and Work of Properzia De'Rossi, Renaissance Sculptor," in Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts, ed. Natalie Harris Bluestone (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1995), 38-64
53. Janet Bergstrom, Camera Obscura 20-21 (1989): 98, writing about female spectatorship in the context of film, admits "I can talk about the ways in which textual systems are organized in Akerman's films, but I cannot hope to predict any given individual's 'reception' of this 'information' - what is internalized, how, when, according to what associations, with what degree of affect, etc."
54. For speculations on female viewers looking at and influencing the shape of pictures of idealized women, see Molly Emma Aitken, "Spectatorship and Femininity in Kangra Style Painting," in Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian Art, ed. Vidya Dehejia (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1997), 82-102
55. Joshi, Purdah and Polygamy, 46
56. J.S. Brooke, Political History of the State of Jaipur (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1868)
57. Jadunath Sarkar, A History of Jaipur, c. 1503-1938, rev. ed. (Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman, 1984), 259. It is difficult to judge the truth of such statements. Regencies had long been the Rajput state's answer to minorities, and the nobles must have deemed them tolerable. J.S. Brooke acknowledges that regencies were considered far preferable to allowing one noble to gain ascendancy over his rivals, a situation that could quickly divide a kingdom
58. Śyam Singh Ratnawat, Kachhawan ri Vanshavali (A genealogical account of the Kachhawa nobility) (Jaipur: Center for Rajasthan Studies, 1981)
59. Chaitra, vadi 10, saṁvat 1830 (1773 CE)
60. Pauscombining dot belowa, sudi I, saṁvat 1830 (1773 CE)
61. Dastur Qaumwar, Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner
62. Joshi, Purdah and Polygamy, 175, writes that "The apartments [of zanānās] were constructed in such a manner that each of them could look out onto the ceremonial functions held in the mardana palace. A common hall with jharokhas covered by the jalis (pierced stone screen) carved in the stone were constructed for the female inmates; this was constructed opposite to the hall reserved for ceremonial functions." Another excellent source for basic information on the zanānā is A ZENANA: Scenes and Recollections, video, dirs. Roger Sandall and Jayasinhji Jhala, 1982. In the film, a singer from the Jhāla court of Dhrangadhra, Gujarat, recalls her visit to Jaiselmer and remembers how the Mahārānī, looking through binoculars, spied the approach of her caravan from an upper window of her zanānā, a vivid reminder that women in the zanānā had access to screened windows looking outside the palace, allowing them some view of activities in the streets and beyond
63. Robert Stern, The Cat and the Lion: Jaipur State in the British Raj (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1988), 70-71. Stern writes: "The regency was, of course, ideally situated in the zenana to pursue a policy of non-cooperation with its new protector. The zenana's operations and its principals, and many of their agents, were literally hidden from British sight, much less scrutiny, behind the palace purdah - as was the knowledge that can be power, hidden. In effect, the ladies of the regency used the purdah to bar the Company's access to its protectorate: to any knowledge of its working, or of the roles that were crucial to its maintenance, or vulnerable to British interference and non-interference."
64. Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor or Mogul India: 1653-1708, trans. William Irvine (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1965), vol. 2, 329
65. Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1984), 189. The account is from a Muslim prince, the son of the Palampur Nawab
66. For several examples and a discussion of this theme, see Desai, Life at Court, 86-95; catalogue entries 70-72 provide three excellent Mughal examples. There is also a striking similarity between the ways Rajput kings are eroticized and the way the Nayaka rulers of Vijayanagara were eroticized; there may have been a connection between these two as well
67. A well-known seventeenth-century example is the painting of Mahārāo Jagat Simcombining dot belowh of Kotah in a garden, ca. 1660 ("Knellington Collection"), reproduced most recently in Steven Kossak, Indian Court Painting, 16th-19th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), cat. no. 29
68. and Mahārājā Takht Simcombining dot belowh with a queen/mistress and ladies in a garden, ca. 1800, private collection, reproduced in Pratapaditya Pal, Court Paintings of India, 16th-19th Centuries (New York: Navin Kumar, 1983), fig. R44
69. Howard Hodgkin Collection. Andrew Topsfield and Milo C. Beach, eds., Indian Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Howard Hodgkin (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991), cat. no. 20
70. Rosemary Crill, Marwar Painting (Mumbai: India Book House Limited in association with Mehrangarh Publishers, 2000), fig. 112. The painting is in the possession of the Mehrangarh Fort Trust, Jodhpur
71. Hanna Papanek, "Purdah: Separate Worlds and Symbolic Shelter," in Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1982), 3-53
72. Although familiar to scholars in the field, this phenomenon deserves a full study. Examples abound. At Kishangarh, for instance, one finds a full range of ways in which rulers and Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa could be equated, from portraits in which rulers were depicted with blue skin, to paintings of Rādhā and Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa in the courtly settings and landscapes of Kishangarh, to juxtapositions of kings and Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa such as that in Raja Savant Simcombining dot belowh with a Courtesan in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, acc. no. 131.1995, reproduced in Jim Masselos, Jackie Menzies, and Pratapaditya Pal, eds., Dancing to the Flute: Music and Dance in Indian Art (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997), cat. no. 171
73. See, for instance, the Bundi-style painting of Rādhā and Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa reproduced in Masselos et al., eds., Dancing to the Flute, cat. no. 40. The painting, in the collection of Maximilian Hughes (Sydney, Australia), shows Rādhā wearing Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa's clothes, peacock crown, even halo, while playing his flute. Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa, wearing Rādhā's clothes, stands below her, clearly looking up to her and adopting a slightly bent posture under the weight of a sahelī's arms. The only give-away is his blue skin and the fact that Rādhā's clothes, on him, have taken on Krcombining dot belowscombining dot belowncombining dot belowa's signature yellow hue
74. The three paintings to which I refer are as follows: (1) A detail of a larger scene: below the principal scene of a zanānā darbār, Mahārājā Takht Simcombining dot belowh swings between rows of women who stand in an̄jali, reproduced in B.N. Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1986), cat. no. 5
75. The painting is in the collection of Maharaja Gajai Singhji, Umaid Bhavan Palace, no. 1360. (2) A ruler, probably of a Marwar tcombining dot belowhikānā, swings between rows of men on one side, and women on the other in a painting reproduced in Sotheby's New York, Indian and Southeast Asian Art, December 5, 1992, lot no. 154
76. A Jodhpur painting of Mahārājā Mān Simcombining dot belowh watching a noble on a swing in the Mehrangarh Fort Museum Trust, Jodhpur, no. 79, reproduced in Crill, Marwar Painting, fig. 107
77. Kumar Sangram Singh Collection, Jaipur, KSS 14. The painting is one in a group from Uniara, mid-eighteenth century. In paintings like this one, the woman is intended to be seductive to the viewer, who takes the role, implicitly, of a voyeur. The notion that a male viewer has caught the woman unawares in such paintings is made explicit in Sotheby's New York, Fine Indian and Persian Miniatures, March 25, 1987, lot no. 119, in which a Bikaner ruler, embodying the male viewer, enters the scene on horseback from the right
78. Paul F. Walter Collection. Reproduced in Pratapaditya Pal, The Classical Tradition in Rajput Painting from the Paul F. Walter Collection (New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978), pl. 48
79. Ramdev P. Kathuria, Life in the Courts of Rajasthan During the 18th Century (New Delhi: Ram Nagar, 1987), 34-35. Kathuria lists beauty as one of the qualities of a king and cites two texts, the 1759 Niti Prakash by Mohta Hathi Singh from Bikaner, and an eighteenth-century text called the Rajan Raut ri Bat Banav, which lists "rup" and "sakal nayak" among its thirty-three characteristics of a king
80. Topsfield, Paintings from Rajasthan, cat. no. 204
81. Private collection. Stella Kramrisch, Painted Delight: Indian Paintings from Philadelphia Collections (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1986), cat. no. 66
82. Jane Greenough Green Collection. Published in Pratapaditya Pal, Stephen Markel, and Janice Leoshko, eds., Pleasure Gardens of the Mind: Indian Paintings from the Jane Greenough Green Collection (Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1993), cat. no. 52
83. O.C. Gangoly, "Rajput Portraits of the Indigenous School," Marg 7,4 (September 1954): 12-21, fig. I. The painting is one of a group that Gangoly rather mysteriously identifies as "recently come to light." He does not identify the location of these paintings
84. The Jaipur Dastur Qaumwar
85. Bharat Kala Bhavan, Enrico Isacco Photographic Library
86. Karl Khandalavala, Moti Chandra, and Pramod Chandra, Miniature Painting: A Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Sri Motichand Khajanchi Collection Held by the Lalit Kala Akademi, 1960 (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1960), 61