Topic: Nayika

[Nichi]

A Heroine, Longing for Her Lover, Gazes at Mating Pigeons ca. 1701 - 1800. Indian, Rajasthan, Bundi 18th century.

[Nichi]

Utka Nayika - she who waits anxiously for her lover in a grove.

[Nichi]

I want to apologize to anyone who has followed these image-laden threads. I can see now, on my laptop, how utterly faded and unappealing the clarity is on so many of them. I was grabbing and posting them all on a computer monitor which rendered a very dense and dark picture. Most of the time, I assumed that any faults were on my screen, and that they would surely not come through here. As I discover them on this newer laptop, I'm so disappointed. No wonder they never got much response - most of them barely cut the muster.

So sorry.

[Nichi]

Labdhapraudha Nayika: Lovers in a pavillion, Kama, Brahma and Sarasvati above. Creator/Artist: Kasam, son of Ahamad, Indian, (active 17th century). Creation Date: 1750. Binney Collection, San Diego Museum of Art, South Asian Art

What a lovely idea, that Kama, Brahma, and Saraswati pay a visit.

[Nichi]

Abhisarika, 1897, Abanindranath Tagore

[Nichi]

Woman Who Is Driven by Passion to Meet Her Lover (Kamabhisarika Nayika) Page from a dispersed series of the Rasikapriya (Connoisseur's Delights) of Keshavadasa. Rajasthan, Mewar Region, c.1640-1650.


The Rasikapriya is one of many Indian poetic texts that focus on the classification of lovers. In it, lovers are arranged by physical appearance or by the circumstances and emotions of their encounters. The actors in these dramas are most often Radha and Krishna, presented not as figures to worship, but as models of human passions. In this painting, the heroine is so eager to meet her lover that she ignores all dangers, including the dark, stormy night; the lurking demons, ghouls, and tigers; the snake that wraps around her ankle; and even her lost jewelry. By the mid-seventeenth century, Rajput painters selectively incorporated aspects of the Mughal style, such as greater color range and more complex landscapes. They also occasionally borrowed Mughal motifs like the rounded pink rocks and the horned demons seen here.



Additional information:

        Few Indian texts demand more of their audience than the Rasikapriya (Connoisseur’s Delights), a medieval Hindi text composed in 1591 by Keshavadasa, a poet at the court of Orchha (see Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004-149-20,21). Written in a deliberately challenging rhetorical style, it encourages its readers to appreciate the subtleties of both its poetical form and its substance, which is the many faces of love. It displays an Indian fondness for classification, categorizing lovers in manifold ways: sometimes by physical appearance, other times by the circumstances under which they meet, and still other times by emotional complexion. These categories are further subdivided into manifest and latent expressions. By rich structure and language the reader is led to imagine or recall the many nuanced phases and emotions of a love relationship, such as the pleasure discovered with the first awakening of desire, the pangs of sorrow suffered at even temporary separation, and the indignation provoked by jealousy and neglect. The actors in this timeless drama are Krishna and Radha, presented here not as figures to worship, but as exemplars with earthly passions.

    As one might expect of a text that dwells upon beauty and lovemaking, the Rasikapriya was a favorite subject of illustration. Its emphasis on states of being was perfectly suited to a visual aesthetic that rarely felt a need to individualize figures by means of explicit gestures and expressions, but was content to allude to the actions and emotions of archetypal figures by use of visual metaphor, compositional juxtaposition, and color. Text and image operate in tandem, with verses written in the yellow band above the painting proper alerting both painter and viewer to the nature of the situation below. The verse above this painting, for example, describes one of three types of heroine eager to meet her lover; this is a heroine whose physical desire for her beloved is so strong that she will brave any danger to meet him:

        Demons watch her from all sides as her
        feet trample the hood of a coiled snake. She
        neither heeds nor senses the gathering storm,
        nor hears the crickets, or sounds of thunder.
        Oblivious of her lost trinkets, or her torn
        clothing, she feels not the thorn’s cut on her
        breast. The ghouls ask: “O woman! How
        did you acquire such fortitude, to pursue
        this tryst?”1

    The painter responds to these verses by setting the woman a rigorous test, placing her as far as possible from the object of her desire and strewing her tortuous path with a host of obstacles. The text clearly inspires some features of the painting, such as the snake encircling the heroine’s ankle, the bangle lying unnoticed on the ground behind her, the rainstorm assailing her, and the ghouls lurking in the hilly terrain. Other elements bear a more tangential relationship to the text. Ensconced in a brightly colored cave is a yogi with matted hair piled high, a figure probably evoked by the ghouls’ mention of the yogic powers that they guess the heroine must possess to persevere against such adversity. Two Persianate divs (demons) add variety to the demons who menace the woman, while a tiger dozing peacefully poses only a dormant threat.

    But these extratextual elements also demonstrate the limits of individual innovation in traditional Indian painting, for most of them appear in the same positions in two other contemporary Mewari images of the same scene.2 Thus it is clear that what we see is not the result of a direct, personal response to the verses by a single artist, but a set of visual conventions developed in Mewar for the Rasikapriya within a half-century of its composition. Individual artists operated within this emerging tradition, and restricted their innovations to a few selected details. In this painting, for example, the painter installs Krishna in a pavilion rather than the bower seen in other images, and heightens the sense of imminent passion by coloring his chamber a brilliant red. He also manipulates the gestures of the two main figures so that both raise a small flower to the mouth. He maintains the coloring of the heroine’s clothes and the general layout of the landscape, but achieves a stronger sense of compartmentalization by strengthening and varying the color blocks of the landscape, and by interlocking the rock and arboreal forms more tightly. The general style is derived from Sahibdin, the leading painter at the court at Udaipur in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, but these last features and the treatment of Krishna’s face indicate the hand of another artist in the Mewar workshop. John Seyller, from Intimate Worlds: Indian Painting from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection (2001), pp. 70-71.

    1. Chapter 7, Verse 3; translated by Richard Cohen. The specific identification as kamabhisarika rather than the more general category of abhisarika is established by the inscription on the related painting in the Government Museum, Udaipur (1097 26/142); see The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1996), vol. 7, color plate VI, fig. 2.
    2. One is in Udaipur (see n. 1 above). For the other, now in the Goenka Collection, see B. N. Goswamy with Usha Bhatia. Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Paintings. New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi and Rabindra Bhavan, 1999, p. 128, no. 100.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/97359.html?mulR=547649773|6

[Nichi]

The woman braves the terrors of a dark and stormy night in order to meet her lover, and her broken ornaments lie on the ground near the threatening snakes. The painting is 'Pahari', or from the Punjab Hills. Pahari artists often depicted the theme of eight nayikas, showing ladies in different states of love and their behaviour. This nayika is called Abhisarika or 'fearless'. Guler, c.1760.

Click & enlarge for lovely detail:   http://media.vam.ac.uk/collections/img/2014/HC/2014HC2435_2500.jpg

(or the attachment)

[Nichi]

Radha seated on a carpet on a terrace, being consoled by a companion, illustration to a Nayaka Nayika series. Garhwal, ca. 1780-1790

Attachment for best view (click and enlarge):

[Nichi]

The impatient mistress (vasakasajja nayika), style of Harkhu, opaque watercolour on paper, Pahari, Chamba (Kangra style), ca. 1830.

Click and enlarge for best view: http://media.vam.ac.uk/collections/img/2013/GD/2013GD5512_2500.jpg

[Nichi]

Prositapatika Nayika, a disconsolate lady reclining on a bed, attended by an elder lady and two maids. Nurpur, ca. 1770-1780.


(Attachment for enlarged view.)

[Nichi]

Vipralabdha Nayika, the lady who has waited the whole night for her lover and now at dawn strips herself of her ornaments in disgust at his fickle behaviour. Guler, ca. 1760

[Nichi]

Vasakasayya Nayika, the lady who looks out expectantly from the door of her house, awaiting her lover. Guler, ca. 1750-1760

Attachment for best view:

[Nichi]

Vasakasajja Nayika. The expectant lady, vasakasajja nayika, with peacocks representing the absent lover. lady looking out from balcony as the storm clouds break, peacocks greet the rain and maids on the terrace below scurry for shelter. Mandi, ca. 1840

Attachment for best view:

[Nichi]

Prositapatika Nayika, the lady who sits fretting with her friend, refusing to be comforted because her lover is absent. The object, probably a jonquil, which she holds in her hand is similar to the flowering stalk which the Lady on the Terrace (W.G.A. collection) holds in a similar situation. Possibly by the artist Punch, Guler, ca. 1760.

Really benefits from enlarging:
http://media.vam.ac.uk/collections/img/2013/GD/2013GD5517_2500.jpg

[Nichi]

Illustration for a Rasikapriya, watercolor on paper from India, dated 1694, Honolulu Museum of Art.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/'Illustration_for_the_Rasikapriya'%2C_dated_1694%2C_Honolulu_Museum_of_Art%2C_10692.1.JPG/704px-'Illustration_for_the_Rasikapriya'%2C_dated_1694%2C_Honolulu_Museum_of_Art%2C_10692.1.JPG