From soka (pity) came sloka (verse), wrote Valmiki, the Indian sage to whom the Ramayana is attributed.
Moved by the death of a lovebird at a hunter’s arrow, he composed the Sanskrit epic that recounts how Rama, avatar of the Hindi deity Vishnu, rescued his bride Sita from the clutches of the demon-king Ravana.
From Valmiki’s verse, completed in the second half of the first millennium BC, came much else besides: a core tradition of Hinduism, prayers, festivals, countless retellings in drama, sculpture and painting across India and south-east Asia and, now, a rich and lively exhibition at the British Library.
At the show’s heart is the Ramayana manuscript commissioned in the early 17th century by Jagat Singh, ruler of the state of Mewar in north-west India.
This included more than 400 paintings, the aim being to depict every single one of the 24,000-verse narrative’s twists and turns.
In the book accompanying the exhibition, Jerry Losty, its curator, suggests that this extravagant completism was one-upmanship directed at Mewar’s Mogul overlords.
They had their own lavishly illustrated versions both of the Ramayana and of the lives of their glorious forebears; but the princes of Mewar claimed descent from Rama and, in creating the new Ramayana, Jagat Singh wanted implicitly to rebuke their pretensions.
Mewar Style
About 120 of these paintings, all approximately A4-sized and produced between 1649 and 1653 in Udaipur, are included in the exhibition.
Many are by Sahib Din, reckoned to be the finest exponent of the Mewar style and the moving force behind the design of this Ramayana.
What is most striking about them is their combination of exquisite detail with extreme stylisation.
There is no western-style perspective; the rich colours are flatly applied, with little shadow-modelling; the figures are mostly seen in profile with serene expressions, even during the most tumultuous battles.
The same characters can appear several times in the same frame, a quirk that reflects the need to cover every last incident but also means that each painting is its own little story.
At the same time, every last piece of jewellery or weaponry is carefully picked out, along with diverse fabric patterns and architectural ornaments; when Ravana fights his last battle with Rama, his 20 arms — each sporting a bead bracelet — flourish an A-to-Z of weaponry, and his golden armour is decorated with a fine red flower pattern (the same weird combination of delicacy and savagery that one sees in a Renaissance dagger).
The trees exemplify these twin traits: various types of leaf, flower and fruit are attentively detailed — species such as cottonwood are identifiable — yet the trees themselves are flatly schematic.
The overall effect is to fascinate the viewer: with their visual intricacy and narrative complexity, these are pictures that one can readily lose oneself in.
The sense of immersion is enhanced by the handsome exhibition design, which is by the Tara Arts theatre company.
The paintings are lined up in narrative order on bold red and yellow partitions, the colour scheme echoing the red and yellow border framing many of the individual pictures; above these rise towers and trees drawn from the paintings themselves.
The most striking feature, however, is a giant figure of Ravana, complete with 10 heads and sword and shield, his body papered with newspapers in a variety of Indian scripts: a neat symbol of the Rama-yana’s central place in Indian culture.
Similar effigies, sometimes stuffed with fireworks, are burnt at the climax of the Hindu festival of Dussehra in early autumn; such a blaze would make a memorable conclusion for this show when its time is up on September 14, but the organisers may boringly prefer not to endanger the library’s priceless books.
Like the Mewar paintings, this show aims to be comprehensive.
The exhibition includes numerous examples of other Ramayana paintings of around the same time, Ramayanas in other scripts, a little section introducing the main characters (including a beautiful miniature of Vishnu flying down to rescue an elephant-god in a fix), shadow puppets, cotton temple hangings depicting battle scenes (the cloth hectic with arrows), gloomy Victorian prints (as if the world had taken a turn for the murkier since the Mewar painters were at work), film posters, even clips from the 1980s TV version, which pulled in 100 million viewers at a time.
The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India’s Great Epic runs at the British Library, London, until September 14.
