RE-DISCOVERIING A 6TH CENTURY MAHABHARATA

Balinese palm leaf manuscript illustration of the Ramayana. Sita sees the golden deer and urges Rama to catch it.

written and illustrated by Ida Bagus Adnyana of Geriya Gunung Sari, Pliatan, Bali, c. 1975. (Top) Sita sees the golden deer and urges Rama to catch it - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/ramayana/#sthash.xEeuuab1.dpuf

 

                                                                                            The Dasa Griba Rakshash Charitram Vadha                                                                                        

The eureka moment came purely by chance. Scholars working on the Sixth Century Vanhi Purana at the Asiatic Society library were puzzled to find that the manuscript seemed incomplete.They started looking through the Catalogus Catalogorum -a global repository of Sanskrit manuscripts compiled by German scholar Aufrecht -and realized two more identical manuscripts existed. One was preserved at the India Office Library at London and the second at the Kolkata-based Samskrita Sahitya Parishad, a 100-year-old research institution partly funded by the HRD ministry.

Their curiosity whetted, the scholars scoured the archives and found the complete version of the Vanhi Purana manuscript. When they were analyzing it, they stumbled upon the Dasa Griba Rakshash Charitram Vadha, which did not have any bearing with the Vanhi (fire) Purana.  

Balinese illustrated palm manuscript of the Ramayana. Ravana, in the guise of a mendicant, entices Sita out of the magic circle.

 

For some time they could not understand why the slokas of the purana suddenly started telling another story. But they did feel that the story was extremely familiar because the predominant characters were Rama, Sita and Ravana. Before long, the scholars realized that they were reading a Sixth Century version of the Ramayana with many interpolations. It is markedly different from the more accepted 4 BC Valmiki Ramayana.    


"Interestingly in this version, there are just five kandas (sections) instead of the accepted seven. There is no Balkanda - the part that deals with Rama's childhood - or Uttarkanda. This Ramayana ends with the return of Rama and Sita from exile and his ascension to the Ayodhya throne," said Anasuya Bhowmick, lead scholar of the Asiatic Society for the project, who is working with the manuscript.

The abduction of Sita by Ravana, stone relief at Prambanan temple, central Java, c. 900 AD

This Ramayana does not begin with the curse that drove Dasarath to send his son to exile. Instead, it begins with a curse that befell goddess Lakshmi when rakshash guru Shukracharya got angry with Lord Narayan for killing Shukracharya's wife, who would bring dead rakshashas to life in a war between Gods and demons. The other curse falls on both Lakshmi and Narayan when Dharitri cannot bear the pain of the constant battle between Gods and demons. In both cases, Laxmi and Narayan are told that they will have to bear the pain of separation.             
"This version of the Ramayana focuses more on the separation of the husband and wife rather than that of father and son. Again, Ram here is more human than God, with follies like anger and failure. Some interesting details -like the ages of Sita and Rama at the time of marriage and the date when Sita was abducted by Ravana are in this version," said Sanskrit scholar Manabendu Bandyopadhyay, president of the parishad and general secretary of Asiatic Society. "We will take about a year to complete the reading and interpretation of this version of the Ramayana and it will be published as a book by Asiatic Society," Bhowmick said.                                      Text: Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, TNS  Photo credits: British Library   

FORGOTTEN ROLE OF 70,000 INDIAN SOLDIERS WHO DIED FOR BRITAIN IN WW I

King George V inspects Indian troops at La Cateau, 1918

'Few people are aware 1.5 million Indians fought – that there were men in turbans in the same trenches as the Tommies'

Like 1.5 million of his fellow countrymen in colonial India, Sukha volunteered enthusiastically when the call came for recruits to bear arms for Britain’s “King Emperor” in a far-off European war in 1914.

It was a journey from which the 30-year-old serviceman, again like tens of thousands of his compatriots, never returned. But when Sukha died, his remains were abandoned in a different “no man’s land” from the Flanders quagmire that claimed the lives of so many who fought on the Western Front in the First World War.

Indian troops at Cape Helles during the Gallipolli campaign

When he died of pneumonia in 1915 in a Hampshire military hospital, neither his Hindu nor Muslim comrades were prepared to accept his body for burial. Instead, the vicar of St Nicholas Church in Brockenhurst offered a space in the graveyard for him.

The headstone, bought with contributions from parishioners, paid tribute to the serviceman from Uttar Pradesh. It reads: “By creed, he was not Christian, but his earthly life was sacrificed in the interests of others.”

Indian and British troops of the Lucknow Cavalry Brigade relax in a farmyard

Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from modern-day India and Pakistan fought alongside the British and other allies in the conflict. For 12 months between 1914 and 1915, the British Indian Army fought on one of the bloodiest stretches of the Western Front.

But despite contributing the largest volunteer army from Britain’s imperial dominions at a cost of some 70,000 lives, there is concern that the sacrifice of the fighters from pre-partition India has been allowed to slip between the cracks of the post-colonial history of both countries.

Indian soldiers recuperate on the beach at Bournmouth

By Armistice Day, soldiers from the subcontinent had won 11 Victoria Crosses, including the very first awarded to a British Indian Army soldier – Khudadad Khan, a machine gunner with the 129th Baluchi regiment. The Germans were taken aback by the ferocity with which the Indians fought. One enemy soldier, who had witnessed Sikh troops in hand-to-hand combat at Neuve Chapelle in 1915, wrote: “At first we spoke of them with contempt. Today we look on them in a different light …. In no time they were in our trenches and truly these brown enemies are not to be despised. With butt ends, bayonets, swords and daggers we fought each other and we had bitter hard work.”

Indian cavalry soldiers gives his rations to starving girl, Mesopotamia

The heavy death toll was also exacerbated by acts of negligence. The Indian regiments were sent to Europe in their tropical cotton drill; winter kit, including greatcoats, did not arrive before dozens had perished from cold and frostbite.

The racist attitudes of the era also enflamed tensions. Wounded Indian soldiers being cared for in hospitals in places such as Brighton were not allowed to receive direct care from English nurses, and recuperating troops were also kept under armed guard in locked camps.

One injured private or “sepoy” felt sufficiently aggrieved to write a letter directly to King George V. “The Indians have given their lives for 11 rupees,” he wrote. “Any man who comes here wounded is returned thrice and four times to the trenches. Only that man goes to India who has lost an arm or a leg or an eye.”

Letter by soldier Ram Singh (Garhwal Rifles) from Kitchener Indian Hospital, Brighton to his father

Eventually, Britain’s generals recognised that the Western Front was not the best place to deploy its Indian troops and instead sent them into battle in locations from Mesopotamia to Gallipoli, where they again fought valiantly.

In the 1920s a large memorial to India’s First World War dead was built in northern France at Neuve Chapelle, but until this month there has been little to mark their sacrifice on British soil.

A memorial in honour of the 130,000 Sikh soldiers who fought in the conflict was unveiled in November 2015 at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, after a fundraising drive by British Sikhs.

The India Gate war memorial in New Delhi commemorating the British war dead

The India Gate memorial in New Delhi commeorates the British war dead, but it makes no mention of the 70,000 Indian soldiers who died during the war. The Indian government has finally decided to build a national war memorial, but the site has yet to be decided.

But Indian literature touched the war experience in one tragic tale. When the great British poet Wilfred Owen (author of the greatest anti-war poem in the English language, 'Dulce et Decorum Est', was to return to the front to give his life in the futile First World War, he recited Tagore's 'Parting Words' to his mother as his last goodbye. When he was so tragically and pointlessly killed, Owen's mother found Tagore's poem copied out in her son's hand in his diary:

When I go from hence

let this be my parting word,

that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus

that expands on the ocean of light,

and thus am I blessed

---let this be my parting word.

In this playhouse of infinite forms

I have had my play

and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.

My whole body and my limbs

have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch;

and if the end comes here, let it come

- let this be my parting word.

Indian soldiers in transit pass through Paris

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains war cemeteries in India, mostly commemorating the Second World War rather than the First. The most famous epitaph of them all is inscribed at the Kohima War Cemetery in North-East India. It reads, "When you go home, tell them of us and say/ For your tomorrow, we gave our today".

Indian soldiers man a fortification in East Africa, 1915

The Indian soldiers who died in the First World War could make no such claim. They gave their "todays" for someone else's "yesterdays". They left behind orphans, but history has orphaned them as well. As Imperialism has bitten the dust, it is recalled increasingly for its repression and racism, and its soldiers, when not reviled, are largely regarded as having served an unworthy cause.

But they were men who did their duty, as they saw it. And they were Indians. It is a matter of quiet satisfaction that their overdue rehabilitation has now begun.

- Cahal Milmo and BBC Magazine

THE RAMAYANA BY YAKUB CHITRAKAR - THE PATUA OF BENGAL

 

Yakub Chitrakar, with a Ramayana scroll

THE RAMAYANA BY THE PATUAS OF MEDINIPUR, WEST BENGAL

The patuas of Medinipur have for many generations painted scrolls designed to be unrolled while the story accompanying the pictures is sung. The patas are sheets of paper of equal or different sizes sewn together and painted. Historically the scrolls told religious stories but in the 20th century the artists have added historical events, ecological disasters such as storms and floods, and commentary on social issues.

The patua ekes out a meager income by going from village to village and house to house with his bag of scrolls. In return for money or food, he unrolls a pata and tells or sings the story. While most of the patuas are men, there are now a few women artists.

Yakub, with his family, at work

The patuas of Medinipur are an endogamous caste whose religion and customs lie between Hinduism and Islam. While they follow Muslim custom for life-marking ceremonies, they paint more Hindu stories than Muslim, and observe a number of Hindu rituals. 

Yakub, applying cloth to the back of a scroll

YAKUB CHITRAKAR

Ram, Sita, Lakshman with a sage

For centuries, Muslim patuas of this village, about 150 km from Kolkata, and a few others spread across several districts of West Bengal like Hooghly, Bankura Birbhum and Purulia, have retold India’s favourite story through songs and scrolls. “When I am singing and pointing out how Ravan repents his deeds as Ram is about to kill him, I am not a Hindu or a Muslim. I am just the story,” says Yakub.

Ram hears from Jataya that Sita has been abducted

The paintings are characterised by the use of bright colours and quirky narrative styles. Traditionally, each scroll is about 30 foot long, replete with intricate panels depicting scenes such as Sita’s abduction or Ravan’s death. The paintings are a part of performance and the chitrakar unfurls it to the accompaniment of the song.

Sugriva says, "We must go and get Sita back."

As someone growing up in the village, it was not surprising that Yakub chose this profession. He was trained by his grandfather Banamali Chitrakar from when he was about seven years old. “My grandfather was a very well-known chitrakar. Quite a few museums have his work in their collection. He trained me not only with the paint and the brush but also as a singer,” says Yakub.

Angada curled his tail, so he could sit higher and took Ravana's crown

When it comes to the antecedents of the Muslim chitrakars, there are various theories. Medieval texts, such as the Mangal Kavya, suggest that the patuas were originally a Hindu caste who converted to Islam. Yakub says that is not the case with his family. “My ancestors were originally Muslims and came from a village near Dhaka. It could have been a famine in the village about 200 years ago that led us to settle down here,” says Yakub. He straddles two faiths, practising customs from each religion. “We offer namaz three times a day, but we also follow many traditional Hindu customs when it comes to weddings and other important ceremonies,” he says.

Ram and Ravana fight in Lanka

Text by: Premankar Biswas and Geraldine Forbes Photo credit: Subham Dutta, Geraldine Forbes and Amitabha Gupta

KOH-I-NOOR 'MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT': THE LEGENDARY DIAMOND

The Koh-i-Noor in its original size and setting

Some say it once weighed 793 carats.Today, it is still 109 carats. Flawless, white and very rare. Perhaps most famous of all the precious stones that have made their way into Indian and world folklore is the Koh-I-Noor Diamond. It was once believed that whoever owned this infamous gem ruled the world. It is most likely that the Koh-I-Noor started life in the Golkonda Kingdom, in the Southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The Golkonda Kingdom was one of the world's earliest diamond producing regions, and one of the only regions known to mine diamonds until 1725, when they were first discovered in parts of Brazil.

As with many legendary diamonds and gems, there are contrasting stories and rumors regarding the origin of the Koh-I-Noor. Some believe it was a gift to the earth from Surya (the god of the sun), and that evidence of its existence can be found in ancient Sanskrit writings, dating back over 5000 years. Some Hindus believe it was stolen from the great god Krishna as he lay asleep, whilst others say the Koh-I-Noor was, in fact, the Syamantaka Jewel, another famous precious stone from Indian mythology, believed to have been blessed with great magical powers.


FIRST MENTION OF THE GEM
Malik Kafur, Alauddin Khilji's general, made a successful raid on Warangal in 1310 where he might have acquired the Koh-i-noor diamond.The diamond remained with Khilji dynasty, and later passed on to the succeeding dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate, until it came into the possession of Babur, who established the Mughal Empire in 1526. He called the stone 'the Diamond of Bābur' at the time, although it had been called by other names before it came into his possession. Both Babur and his son and successor, Humayun mention in their memoirs the origins of 'the Diamond of Bābur'.

The emperor Shah Jahan had the diamond mounted on his famous peacock throne. 


THE KOH-I-NOOR GETS ITS NAME
Following the invasion of Nadir Shah, the Turkic ruler of Afsharid Persia in 1739 and the sacking of Agra and Delhi. Along with the Peacock Throne, he also carried off the Koh-i-Noor to Persia in 1739. It was allegedly Nādir Shāh who exclaimed "Koh-i-Noor!" ("Mountain of Light!") when he finally managed to obtain the famous stone, and this is how the stone gained its present name. There is no reference to this name before 1739.

After the assassination of Nādir Shāh in 1747, the stone came into the hands of his general, Ahmad Shāh Durrānī, who later became the Emir of Afghanistan. In 1830, Shujāh Shāh Durrānī, the deposed Emir of Afghanistan and a descendant of Ahmad Shah Durrani, managed to flee with the diamond. He went to Lahore where the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh forced him to surrender the stone and took its possession.
 

Portrait of Ahmad Shah Durrani, with the Koh-i-Noor on his turban

THE KOH-I-NOOR FALLS INTO BRITISH HANDS
On 29 March 1849, the British raised their flag on the citadel of Lahore and the Punjab was formally proclaimed part of the British Company rule in India. One of the terms of the Treaty of Lahore, the legal agreement formalising this occupation, was as follows:

"The gem called the Koh-i-Noor which was surrenderd by Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk to Maharajah Ranjit Singh and then surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England."


THE DIAMOND IS PRESENTED TO QUEEN VICTORIA
In 1850 the British thought it fitting that the new Maharaja, Duleep Singh, then 13 years old, should personally present the Koh-I-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, after which it became the centre piece of 'the Great Exhibition' staged in Hyde Park, London, which displayed the large diamond in full public view.

It was decided to re-cut the diamond to improve its brilliance.  Prince Albert took a personal interest in having the diamond re-cut. The Koh-i-Noor was badly cut, rose, not brilliant cut. This was probably done during the time of Shah Jahan when it was mounted onto the Peacock Throne. Before that, it was probably even larger in size. Professor Tennant and Reverend W. Mitchell, Lecturer in Mineralogy at King's College, London, were also consulted. Accordingly they wrote a report in which they admitted the improvement which the proposed recutting would have upon the stone, but at the same time they expressed fears that any cutting could endanger its integrity. 

The royal jewellers, Garrads were consulted and they recommended Messrs Coster of Amsterdam, who said the gem could be recut without harming it. Prince Albert gave his permission and Coster sent two of his best men to London, who then worked for 38 days to recut the stone. The final result was an oval brilliant weighing 108.93 metric carats, which meant a loss of weight of just under 43 per cent. plus two smaller stones which could be used for pendants. Queen Victoria had it mounted on a tiara with 2,000 diamonds.

The 109-carat Koh-i.Noor diamond

THE KOH-I-NOOR TODAY
 After Queen Victoria's death it was set in Queen Alexandra's brand-new diamond crown, with which she was crowned at the coronation of her husband, King Edward VII. Queen Alexandra was the first Queen Consort to use the diamond in her crown, followed by Queen Mary and then Queen Elizabeth, the Consort of King George VI.

The Koh-i-Noor in the Queen Mother's crown

It remained the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, until her death. The crown is now kept in the Tower of London. It is the third largest diamond in the Crown Jewels collection.

THE MEWAR RAMAYANA - 1659-1722

Hanuman meets a sea monster on his way to Lanka

THE MEWAR RAMAYANA  WITH 377 ILLUSTRATIONS

The paintings in the manuscripts were created by the artists Sahib Din, Manohar and others. 

Rama and Lakshmana meet the vanaras in the forest

Illustrated in the Mewar-Deccani style. Started in 1649, under Rana Jagat SIngh in Udaipur. 

Rama decapitates Ravana's heads in battle

Work on it continued under his successor Rana Raj Singh in 1653. In 1722, the Bala Kanda, the first book of the Ramayana was completed during the reign of Maharana Sangram Singh.

Rama and Lakshmana with their vanara hosts

Maharana Bhim Singh of Mewar presented James Tod, the political agent of the East India Company four volumes of Jagat Singh's Ramayana in 1820. On his return to London, Tod presented them to the Duke of Sussex, a younger son of King George III. Upon the Duke's demise, his vast library was auctioned off and the volumes then ended up in the British Library.

Rama and Lakshmana meet Sugriva

The paintings are in a unique Mewari-Deccan style, with bright colours and multiple representations, with multiple scenes in some of the paintings.  

Rama, Sita and Lakshmana take leave from Dasharatha before going into exile

Other parts of the Ramayana remained with the royal family and were transferred to the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute and then to its headquarters at Jodhpur. Some parts of it were at the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay, later renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalya, Mumbai (CSMVS). 

Rama and Sita build a hut in the forest

For nearly 150 years, the largest collection remained in the British Library and was never presented in public.  

Ravana being surrounded in his palace

The remaining folios were in private collections in India and a few pages in the India Office library in London.

Sugriva challenges Vali to fight him

In 2014, after a three-year effort sponsored by the Jamsetji Tata Trust, the World Collections Programme, and the Friends of the British Library, the entire collection of paintings has been 
 digitized and is now open to the public for the first time.

Valmiki narrating the Ramayana to Lav and Kush

The entire manuscript can now be viewed at www.bl.uk/ramayana

 

ART FROM THE COURT OF EMPEROR AKBAR - THE HARIVAMSA

"Krishna Holds Up Mount Govardhan to Shelter the Villagers of Braj"

THE MUGHAL HARIVAMSA - THE STORY OF KRISHNA


In 1574, Mughal emperor Akbar (reign 1556-1605) created a bureau of Records and Translation at Fatehpur Sikri. The aim was to translate important texts, including Hindu epics, into Persian and to illustrate them in the royal workshops. In order to accomplish this task, scholarly Mullahs and Pandits collaborated over several years as Sanskrit texts were reborn in Persian — the Mahabharata became the Razmnama; the Vishnu Purana and Kathasaritsagara were translated.

 For the artists at the Mughal court (which included Muslims, Hindus, Europeans and women painters), illustrating these manuscripts posed a special challenge because this was an almost entirely new type of imagery. 

"Balarama and Krishna fighting the enemy"

 (The Harivamsa recounts the story of Krishna, one of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. In this battle scene, Krishna, dressed in yellow and holding his discus, stands atop a mountain. Carrying his own attributes of the plow and pestle, Krishna’s older brother Balarama strikes a soldier of the opposing army.)

One masterpiece from the Harivamsa depicts Krishna lifting Mount Govardhan to protect the villagers of Braj from the wrath of Indra. At the very centre of the painting stands the blue god, executed in the naturalistic Mughal style, but also bearing his attributes of blue skin, vanmala and peacock crown. The mountain is painted as a mass of stylised rocks, derived from Persian, and ultimately Chinese, painting, and is filled with plants, birds and animals. Clustered below are the villagers of Braj, along with a trio of Mughal courtiers. Among the old men, sadhus, young boys, and women, one female figure on the right is loosely based upon a European print image of the Madonna. Of equal interest is the group of cows in the foreground that are painted with great sensitivity and individualisation.

"Balarama and Krishna Fighting the Enemy"

 

 

 

 ( In this battle scene, Krishna, dressed in yellow and holding his discus, stands atop a mountain. Carrying his own attributes of the plow and pestle, Krishna’s older brother Balarama strikes a soldier of the opposing army)


While temple sculpture of the period tends to show Krishna using his little finger to lift the mountain, in this painting he performs the miraculous act with the flat of his palm. This small but significant detail shows that the unknown artist was in line with the earliest iconography of this subject, such as in the relief carvings at Mamallapuram (7th century). The miracle of this and other such works of its kind reflect a simple fact — that Muslim patronage was a vital key to the development of Hindu religious painting. Other folios of the Mughal Harivamsa show Krishna and his brother Balarama fighting their enemies.



- Folios from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York