Shiv_family_MDI

 

Shiva and the Divine Family

Mandi, Punjab Hills, India

1810-20

Size: 200 mm *150 mm 

@Sotheby’s

Artist: Sajnu

 

The painting celebrates the bliss of marriage of Shiva and Parvati who are in the company of the six-headed son Kartikey and the elephant-headed son Ganesh. The ancient scriptures do narrate quarrels between Shiva and Parvati as a modern-day couple but they are immediately drawn back to that attraction of enjoying the simple joys of family life. Sajnu here creates a whisper of love - that whisper where there are no words being spoken as the couple prepare the intoxicating bhang¹ and yet everything is being heard as one looks at the layers of this painting. The family has traveled down to the hills to meet their devotees from that majestic Mount Kailash. The mountain people were aware of their God’s responsibility to them and their artists painted the event of the God’s visit with ingenuity, conviction and familiarity.²

The couple sits on a leopard skin spread over a grassy slope with Parvati resting against a sleeping lion, her vahan (vehicle), as if it was a bolster. She holds a straining cloth and helps in the concoction of bhang, which Shiva likes excessively. Painters from the hills have time and again made the preparation of the bhang a ritual celebrated by the holy family. Parvati gives a solemn look but heavy with concern that Shiva may again overdo the drinking of Soma as he looks at the preparation with an eager smile. Some of his devotees have also used this intoxicant as a means to reach that state of ecstasy and joy and be with him in their meditative mind. Although these “initiates” were considered heretics, they represent one aspect of Saivism in revolt against an orthodoxy where observance had become meaningless.³After all this is maya (illusion) created by the Lord himself.

Parvati wears a purple coloured dress with a golden border and is all decked with jewelry. Shiva, the ascetic he is, wears his usual langot (loincloth) with a lion skin draped around his back leaving bare much of his smooth, ash white body and limbs. They sit under a tree, besides a river, with the setting sun spreading its orange colour into the blue sky getting overcasted with clouds. Ganesh, is delightfully hugging his mother from the back and suckling her breast. Kartikeya while playing around wearing a red scarf carries two vessels maybe just to give a helping hand to his parents. The mouse, peacock and Nandi, the respective vahans all surround the family. There is coolness in the air and a small fire burns at the centre giving that sweet warmness to the family. Framed in an oval panel with beautiful floral design there is radiance in the rendering of the scene.

Divine are the stories woven in the ancient scriptures which take one into a world of imagination requiring that spiritual strength to move finally from the physical world to the realm of oneness. Sajnu understands this contradiction when time and again he draws different forms of the same lord. Therefore, to hear that mythology of Shiva is to open up the layers of the painting and despite it having a complex range of interpretation, the symbolic meaning remains simple.  Daughter of King of Mountains, Himavan and Queen Mena, Parvati is the incarnation of Sati who had immolated herself in the fire of anger after her father Daksh Prajapati had humiliated Shiva, her husband. From childhood, Parvati’s mind had dwelt on Shiva and was determined to win him as her husband by ardent asceticism and severe austerities. Parvati was exceedingly beautiful but had it not been for the intervention of Kama, the Lord of Desire, and as schemed by the Gods, Parvati’s charm would not have affected the Great Yogi. Shiva had gone into deep meditation of countless ages after the death of his wife Sati and now his re-marriage was to result in the birth of a God of greater power in order to defeat Taraka, the invincible demon, who harassed the Gods and threatened their very existence. Shiva had married Parvati with the understanding that she would be a loving wife when Shiva longed for her and a yogini when Shiva was absorbed in yoga.

The heavenly couple had made love for thousand years of the gods and from such union, a super god was expected to be born. But Shiva, the Great Yogi even in his ardent love making with the most beautiful of all goddesses had not shed his seed – until the Gods interrupted their unending intercourse. Shiva’s seed fell not into Parvati’s lap, but into Agni, the Lord of Fire who gave it to River Ganga. The mighty river unable to carry its consuming heat, deposited the foetus in the mountains where Kartikeya was born.

Ganesh, the widely worshipped Hindu God, is popularly held to be the son of Shiva and Parvati. The Puranic myth, however, gives a different version and according to some tradition, his only parent was Parvati. When Parvati longed for a son, she created one from her skin and made him her doorkeeper in absence of her husband, Shiva. When Shiva came, Ganesh barred his way and in the ensuing battle Shiva cut off his head. Knowing that he was Parvati’s son, asked Gods to replace it with the head of the first being they would meet. They encountered an elephant.   

Sajnu creates a touching family scene but never allowing the viewer to forget the enormous power that belongs to each member of the family. As one sees this image, the ancient Sanskrit hymn written by the ten-headed Ravan comes into the joyous mind : 

“May my mind seek happiness in Lord Shiva in whose mind all the living beings of the glorious universe exist,

Who is the companion of Parvati,

Who controls unsurpassed adversity with his compassionate gaze, Which is all-pervading,

And who wears the Heavens as his raiment”⁴

This image belongs to the third phase of the Mandi Court paintings which started with Sajnu migrating to Mandi in about 1808 from Ustehar,  Kangra and finding his patron in Raja Ishwari Sen of Mandi. The Sajnu School made a dramatic change from the coarse or primitive style of painting prevalent in Mandi in the 18^th century by naturalising the Guler and Kangra style of ideal charm. Sajnu was a genius and the Mandi court gave him the heart to create a series of one of the finest miniature paintings one can find  in the realm of Pahari Style. He had the blessings of Nainsukh-Manaku-Purkhu style, yet he was different and created his own geometric drama with jagged angular rhythm  full of elegance.     

 

1. Indian Hemp

2. The Spirit of Indian Paintings by B.N.Goswamy

3. The Manifestation of Shiva by Stella Kramrisch

4. From Shiv Tandav Stotra

 

 

The Missing Link in Pahari Paintings – Lokinder Bisht