Kangra Paintings on Love

Contents: 1. Kangra paintings on love (Sringara). 2. Background of the paintings--Hindi love literature: the Rasikapriya of Keshav Das. 3. The moods of lovers and their meeting places (Dampati Cheshta Varnana). 4. External indications of emotions of love (Hava). 5. The eight heroines (Ashta Nayika). 6. Love in separation (Vipralambha). 7. Love in separation (Mana). 8. Love in separation (Pravasa). 9. Love in union (Samyoga). 10. The twelve months (Baramasa). Colour plates and notes. Birds, insects, trees, shrubs and climbers mentioned in Sanskrit and Hindi literature. References and notes. Bibliography. Index.

"Dr. M.S. Randhawa, the author of this beautiful book on the Kangra Paintings on Love, hardly needs an introduction to the scholarly world. He has to his credit more than thirty books in English, Hindi and Punjabi on such diverse subjects as social and scientific problems, art and culture. He combines in himself the critical acumen of a scientist (which he is by academic training) with sensitive aesthetic feelings. It is both rare and laudable that in the midst of his multifarious duties in his official career as a member of the Indian Civil Service he could find time to pursue his studies on art, literature and aesthetics. His books on these subjects--to mention a few--The Kangra Valley Paintings, The Krishna Legend, The Basohli Paintings, The Kangra Paintings of the Bhagavata Purana, and the present volume--reveal his deep love and knowledge of Indian miniatures and the related literature. He explains the significance of the paintings with scholarly detachment and artistic sensitiveness.

"This important book on the Kangra Paintings on Love brings together for the first time a significant series of paintings on the theme of love--the Nayaka-Nayikas and the Baramasa as portrayed on traditional lines by the Hindi poets, like Keshav Das, Bihari Lal and others. This provides also for the first time a free English translation of Keshav Das's Rasikapriya which inspired the artists of this series.

"These paintings, expressed in lyrical lines and charming colours, are remarkable for their romantic beauty, restraint and tenderness. The landscape, the countryside, the rivers, the trees and flowers, the birds and cattle--all delineated with poetic sympathy--enhance their compositional quality.

"These paintings were deeply influenced by the warm sensuousness of the Vaishnava movement which preached the religion of love and devotion. The love which the Hindi poets have extolled is not parehtal love, but the love between wife and husband--as passionate yet selfless a love as that of Radha for Krishna. The love of Radha for Krishna is the ideal love and this feeling has inspired the common people in their conjugal relationship. It is for this reason that whenever lovers are shown in the Nayaka-Nayika and Baramasa pictures, they are depicted as Radha and Krishna with a deep symbolism of the soul's yearning for union with the eternal and absolute.

"Dr. Randhawa has given a lucid exposition of this delicate theme which is sure to stimulate further writing on the subject by other scholars. His style is simple and elegant." (jacket)