Ragamala,
an introduction
A ragamala is a set of miniature paintings
depicting various musical modes, ragas, of north
Indian music. Each painting is accompanied
by a brief inscription that suggests the mood of
the raga, most frequently love – in its various
aspects – and devotion.
For nearly 400 hundred years ragamala was one of the
most popular genres of Indian miniature painting. These
exquisite painted melodies would have been commissioned
and exchanged by admirers of painting, poetry and music.
Yet, having thrived in the royal courts of India from the second
half of the 15th century, this genre dwindled in the late 19th
century with the decline of aristocratic patronage.
Ragamalas were created in most centres of Indian painting,
but in the majority of cases the identity of the painters and
scribes remains unknown. Interpretation of inscriptions and
regional imagery helps us identify ragamalas of particular
periods and localities.
The Claudio Moscatelli collection of 24 ragamala paintings
encapsulates the striking differences in regional styles. These
loose pages, from multiple ragamala sets, cover practically the
whole of the Indian subcontinent: from the plains of Rajasthan,
to the Pahari region in the foothills of the Himalayas, down to
the Deccan and up to the mountains of Nepal.
Early Ragamalas
At their root is the sacred essence of the raga –
five or more musical notes upon which a melody
is played. More than just a sound, a raga evokes
an emotional response in the listener; it should
‘colour’ the mind.
Medieval Hindustani musicians associated each raga with a
deity, naming the raga, perhaps as a means of memorising the
melodic structure. Intrigued poets of the late medieval period
then personified the ragas and elaborated their tales in vivid
verbal imagery. These stories, along with other influential
texts on Indian classical music, provided the poetic source of
ragamala painting.
The first known record of ragamala painting can be found on
the margins of a now missing manuscript dated to c.1475, from
western India. Images of dancing poses and personified musical
notes were used to enliven the text.
Hindu deities personify the ragas and their raginis, the ‘wives’
of the ragas. Sitting in the centre of the top row Bhairava Raga
is visualised as the many-armed god Shiva, his body smeared
with holy ash, with his bull Nandi at his feet. To the far top
right, the green Megha Raga is identified with the deity Vishnu;
he wears a garland of flowers and a peacock rests at his feet.
Roughly a century divides the 15th-century manuscript
illustrated here and the next surviving documentation of
ragamala painting.
Opposite: The earliest known ragamala, c.1475, present location unknown. Taken from K. Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, Basel 1973
Ragas
Shri Vasanta Bhairava Panchama Megha
Dravidi Ramagiri Bhasa Abhiri Debala
Bhasa
RagINIs
From Divine Icons to
Narrative Scenes
By the middle of the 16th century ragamala
painting began to move away from the depiction
of singular divine icons. Narrative scenes of human
beings in their own environment, expressing
love and longing for their deity became the
artists’ focus.
The landscape and architectural surroundings, barely hinted
at in early ragamalas, became more central to each painting.
Views of daily life, particularly special events, were gradually
added to the popular repertoire of ragamala subjects.
The spread of the Hindu devotional movement bhakti
encouraged a more personal, emotional relationship between
the devotee and the deity and undoubtedly had an influence
on the change in focus in ragamala painting.
Other literary sources which may explain the shift in
ragamala themes are treatises on love, such as Keshava Dasa
of Orchha’s Rasikapriya, c.1591, in which the Hindu gods Radha
and Krishna are a model for human lovers. The three main
characters are the hero, the heroine and her confidante. Their
courtship, misunderstandings, tiffs and eventual reconciliations
gave poets, and in turn painters, ample inspiration.
The Migration of
Ragamala
Constant changes in administrative and military
postings around the empire during the Mughal
period (16th –19th centuries) were an important
factor in the transmission of ragamala painting
styles and subjects.
It is likely that painters and scribes travelled across the Indian
subcontinent with their aristocratic patrons. Imagery commonly
found in early ragamalas from Rajasthan, in northern India, is
curiously repeated in later ragamalas in other far-flung parts
of the Empire.
Artists from Rajasthan, who traditionally produced small
ragamala sets of 36 or 42 paintings, would travel to the
Deccan, southern India, where larger ragamala sets, containing
up to 86 paintings, were more popular. Confronted with
commissions for more complex ragamalas, the Rajasthani
painters and scribes would reinvent subject matter familiar
to them and fill in the gaps.
The migration of ragamalas and the artists from southern
India northwards was also influential in the creation of ‘hybrid’
imagery, based on guesswork, as well as puns on the many
meanings of the word raga itself.
Devotion and
the Deccan
Love, especially unfulfilled and consuming
passion, is an overarching theme of ragamala
painting. Each of the following pages from a
set produced in the southern Deccan depicts
a heroine in a particular state of love.
While love in union is occasionally represented, scenes of
longing and loss frequently hold centre stage. In the wake
of devotional movements which swept through northern
India from the 14th century, both Hindu and Muslim mystics
interpreted ‘love in separation’ as an allegory of the human
soul divided from God. It is personified by the virahini, the
woman separated from her lover. In employing the imagery
of love five Deccani paintings display how a passionate
devotion to God is the only means of salvation.
Offsetting the dramatic foreground, the linear backdrop
owes a great deal to the later Mughal style which encouraged
painters to use perspectival recession. Such compositions owe
a great deal to a style developed in the north for the Nawabs
(rulers) of Oudh. Nawab Shuja’ ud-Daula and his son Asaf
ud-Daula employed a number of European painters at their
court, including artists such as Johan Zoffany and Tilly Kettle
and it is not surprising that European-inspired devices were
put to effective use by ragamala painters.
Nepalese Ragamala
Ragamala paintings from Nepal are relatively rare.
The mainstream tradition of Nepalese painting
was devoted to sacred themes, and paintings
were intended to aid the viewer in performing
religious observance.
These mid-17th-century pages follow the horizontal format
of Nepalese sacred manuscripts of the medieval period. When
they are turned over, the reverse image appears upside-down,
which suggests an original binding along their top edges.
The patron, city of origin and date of completion are unknown.
Compared with other contemporary Nepalese paintings, this
manuscript does not appear to have been produced at a royal
court, but is rather a work commissioned by a merchant or
nobleman who was particularly devoted to music.
