IDENTIFYING ANIMALS IN THE APPLIED ARTS OF INDIA'S DECCAN PLATEAU - Brill
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0 Gijs Kruijtzer
IDENTIFYING ANIMALS
IDENTIFYING ANIMALS IN THE APPLIED ARTS
OF INDIA’S DECCAN PLATEAU
What follows is a discussion of the use of images of animals in the 17th
century in the Deccan Plateau (Central India) in the context of identity and
group boundaries. Since Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer has taken great pains
to show me that the striking use of animal symbolism in the Deccan in the
17th century was nothing new, I should start by pointing out that depictions
of animals in India formed part of two artistic traditions. Firstly the tradition
in the visual arts of representing fighting animals, which goes back to the
ancient Iranian peoples who seem to have spread it far and wide.1 Secondly
the tradition of telling stories about animals which also goes back millennia
and also has a complex history of borrowing between East, West and Middle
East.2 In a way, however, animal symbolism was always new, because it
referred to the social context of the age.
More precisely, and as M. Garcin de Tassy remarks in the introduction to his
history of Hindustani literature, ‘oriental’ animal fables were not only fun,
but also thoroughly political, and an indirect way of expressing political
truths and aspirations.3 My intention is therefore to venture some political
interpretations of animal symbolism employed in architecture and other
applied arts of the Deccan and to show how such symbolism speaks volumes
of the identity issues then current. Perhaps, also, it can teil us something
about the fuzziness or sharpness of group boundaries.
Peace and violence
The depictions of animals in the Deccan moved between the two extremes of
violence and peace. On the one hand we see the theme of animals living in
harmony under the mier of the age, whose very presence pacified his realm,
like a second Solomon. This theme was perhaps developed furthest at the
Mughal court in the first half of the 17th century (fig. 1), which has been
marvellously analysed and illustrated by Ebba Koch, but it was also depicted
and narrated in the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur and Golkonda, to the south
of the Mughal empire.4 In 1637 Johan van Twist arrived in the Deccan as a
Dutch ambassador, to convince the Sultan of Bijapur to launch a joint
offensive against the Portuguese in Goa, during which the Dutch would
attack from the sea side and the Bijapuris from the land side. However, one
of the first officials to whom he spoke, well before he arrived at the court, told
him that his mission would be quite pointless, because: ‘The King of Bijapur’s
land is an enclosed wilderness, in which lions, boars and tigers must live
together in peace.’5 That is to say, the Dutch and the Portuguese, and any
others established in Bijapur had to abide by a soit of Pax Bijapurica.
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100 4
1
Figure i
Lion and cow living in
peace under royal
protection. Detail of the
throne of Mughal
ai
emperor Shah Jahan (r.
1628-66) as depicted by
an anonymous
contemporary painter in
a Bodleian Library
miniature. From Koch,
Shah Jahan and
Orpheus (see note 4)
However, the ‘Solomonic’ symbolism derived its power partly from its
opposite, the symbolism of animal fights. An important example is the gun
Figure 2 cast for the sultan of Ahmadnagar in 1549 (fig. 2). lts muzzle has the shape
Lion mauling a tame of a lion’s head devouring a tame elephant along with its goad (which shows
elephant. The muzzle of that it was a tame elephant). The gun was transferred to Bijapur after the
the Malik-i Maidan gun Bijapur sultan had divided Ahmadnagar with the Mughals in the 1620s.6
in Bijapur, Karnataka. It seems that the voracious symbolism of the gun was not wasted on 17th-
Photograph by the century Bijapurians and was possibly interpreted in terms of a perceived
author, December 2003 struggle between the Muslim-ruled sultanates and Hindus. This is certainly
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101 the impression one gets from the story, more than likely apocryphal but
nonetheless significant, which Johan van Twist related of the casting of the
gun in the printed digest of his ambassadorial journey. Van Twist identified
the maker of the gun as a Roman (obviously a misinterpretation of the word
Rumi, ‘Ottoman’, which is used in an inscription on the gun to refer to the
maker) and said that this Roman not only sacrificed his own son to the gun
but also refused to be paid, and in lieu of payment threw the king’s Hindu
(Brahmin) accountant, who had come to enquire about the payment, into a
fire prepared in the casting pit, adding somewhat enigmatically ‘that the fire
that had digested the money and copper would give him the bill\7
Lions crushing elephants
However, we see the same symbolism of lions attacking elephants employed
by Hindu kings. The lion-crushing-elephant theme seems to have developed
in ancient India out of the general Iranian animal-fights symbolism -
occurring for instance a few times in Kalidasa’s poetry of the high Gupta era -
and is said to symbolise the victory of celestial light over chthonic darkness.8
In the 17th century, Shivaji, the Maratha king who fought both the Mughals
and Bijapur, also employed that symbolism. In any case Shivaji was
identified with a lion throughout the poetic history of his life composed by his
court poet Paramananda. To quote one example from the description of the
confrontation between Shivaji and Afzal Khan, a general of Bijapur: ‘By
entering the terrible forest of Javli / the home of me, the lion / my enemy
Afzal, the elephant / will come unto his death’. In another passage describing
the same confrontation Shivaji is not only likened to a lion but his beard to
an elephant goad (with which he can tame Afzal).9
In his epic history of Shivaji, Paramananda compared both Muslim and
Maratha enemies to elephants, who tried to oppose the lion Shivaji.
Paramananda constantly compared warriors of all parties to lions and rutting
elephants and their war-cries to the roars of lions and the bellowing of
elephants, but mostly he likened Shivaji and his father Shahji, and sometimes
their adherents, to lions, and their opponents to elephants. Many of the
‘elephants’ in the text were Maratha commanders like Suryaji Rao who
‘turned his mind to the contest / [he faced] with wild Shivaji, as [if he were]
an elephant / [about to fight] a lion.’ So all enemies of Shivaji were elephants,
since enemies were ipso facto the adharma (that which goes against the
divine order) of a kingdom, as Paramananda put it.10
Shivaji and the boar
So far, Shivaji seems merely to have been employing a cliché used by all
parties in the Deccan, but on a gate at Raigarh fortress, the site of Shivaji’s
enthronement, we also see an image (fig. 3) that in my view is a boar
trampling an elephant. It is part of what seem to be the original battlements
built by Shivaji.11 lts counterpart is again a lion, or at least its artistic-
mythical variety the yali or surul yali, holding its paw over an elephant on a
pedestal.12 How may we read the ensemble of these two reliefs?
With the use of the boar as a symbol Shivaji put himself in a tradition of
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Hindu kings whö employed the same symbol, most notably the kings ofvia free access
Figure 3a, b and c
Boar trampling an elephant (I.) and
lion protecting or suppressing an
elephant on a pedestal (r.), reliefs
above the entrance of Raigarh
fortress, Maharashtra. Photograph by
the author, December 2003
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103 Vijaynagar, whose emblem was a boar and sword accompanied by the sun
and moon (the sun and the moon signifying eternity, as in the phrase ‘as long
as the sun and moon will shine’).13 The primaeval boar Varaha is the
incarnation of Vishnu that saved the world from a demon enemy of the gods,
and Shivaji's use of this boar symbolism must be seen as expression of his
relation to his arch-enemies, for although all enemies of Shivaji were
adharmic in Paramananda’s view, some were truly demonie. Paramananda
wrote that Shivaji had descended to earth as an incarnation of Vishnu to rid
the earth of mlecchas, impure barbarians, who were in this case Muslims, as
is clearly evident from the context, especially the sultan of Bijapur and the
Mughal Emperor.14
We also see the image of the boar on the patta or gauntlet sword that Shivaji
wears in some of the miniature portraits made of him. He seems to have worn
such a gilded patta very often, as a description of a visit to Shivaji in the
Dutch East India Company archives also mentions him wearing one.15 Such
pattas are also seen with elephant heads at the handle but the one Shivaji is
wearing in two of his miniature portraits clearly has a boar’s head. One of
these so-called ‘Golkonda’ miniatures is in the British Museum and can be
dated to just after the death of Shivaji on the basis of the captions of the
Figure 4 (below left) complete series of which it forms a part (figs. 4 and 5). Another contemporary
Anonymous miniature miniature in which the handle is clearly depicted as a gilded boar is in the
portrait of Shivaji in the Musée Guimet.16
British Museum. From
Doshi, Shivaji and Perhaps then the ensemble at Raigarh should be read as follows: To some
Facets of Maratha enemies Shivaji is like a triumphant boar that tramples his enemies. To other
Culture (note 16) enemies Shivaji is like a lion who allows them to stay on as protected vassals
(hence the pedestal under the right elephant). This is of course speculation,
Figure 5 but the importance of these reliefs should not be underestimated. Unlike
Detail of fig. 4: Patta miniature paintings, these architectural clements were there for all who
with gilded gauntlet in entered Raigarh to see. They were public statements, with a much wider
the shape of a boar audience than texts.
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Figure 6 'Counter-symbolism'
Lion fbllowed by cub (I.),
inscription with sun and It seems that Shivaji’s use of the boar engendered some soit of counter-
moon above it (middle) symbolism from the Bijapur-side. This is evident on the bastion built for the
and lion trampling or lion gun discussed at length above. The inscription on the bastion yields the
shielding an elephant date 1069 AH (1658-9 AD), during which year a large scale campaign was
seconded by a monkey started against Shivaji culminating in the dispatch of Afzal Khan early in the
(r.). Relief on the next year.17 In 1658 the king was still a minor, and I think this is what we see
bastion created for the in the relief to the left of the inscription: a lion cub following either his
Malik-i Maidan gun in mother, who was the regent, or his deceased father (although it must be
Bijapur, Karnataka. noted that both lion and cub are male). To the right of the inscription we see
Photograph by the a lion trampling an elephant accompanied by a monkey (fig. 6).
author, December 2003
The signifïcance of the monkey is found through a Mughal miniature of circa
1600, which displays a similar monkey in a tree with a boar lying dead
below. This is explained by Toby Falk and Simon Digby with a reference to a
story from the lyar-i Danish, in which a monkey initially aids his friend the
boar by shaking fruit from a tree, but the insatiable and ungrateful boar later
tries to attack the monkey and is felled by a branch of the tree, which breaks
under the boar’s weight.18 Such stories were certainly well known in the
Deccan at the time. The poet laureate of Abdullah Qutb Shah of Golkonda
for instance composed a Deccani Urdu rendition of the Tuti-nama (Taks of a
parrot) which contains several stories of different animals killing each other.19
The monkey in the relief might, speculatively, have been employed as a
counter measure against Shivaji’s boar.
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105 Conclusion
So do these images teil us something about boundaries between groups in
early modern India? On close inspection it seems that the stark opposition of
animals in the images was not only about kings who were starkly opposed,
but also about the groups of which they were part. Was this a way of
representing clashes between groups? Does the pictorial opposition of
animals mean that, in common perception, the boundaries between human
groups were as clearly demarcated as that between lion and elephant? In any
case the appeal of the depiction of harmony between animals (fig. 1) as a
representation of the relatively harmonious multi-cultural society that the
Deccan sultanates and the Mughal Empire certainly were for a long time, was
only possible and necessary in a context of contained and uncontained
clashes between groups.
Notes
* The author wishes to thank H.W. Bodewitz, Jos Gommans, Jan Houben and Ellen
Raven for suggesting literature and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer for delving up piles
of relevant images as well as literature.
1. In any case one can today admire reliefs of lions attacking oxen at Persepolis, and it
seems that Iranian peoples such as the Scythians and Sarmatians carried the theme
as far west as Hungary, which becomes evident from the various Scythian,
Sarmatian and Avar objects in the permanent exhibition in the National Museum at
Budapest. The text accompanying a particular clay vessel of the La Tene civilisation
(case 16 no.10) notes that ‘images of animal fights are of Scythian origin’.
2. A. Haddad, Fables de La Fontaine d’origine oriëntale, Paris, 1984, pp. 121-6 and
passim; M. Bosboom and P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Een dierfabel uit India in
Amsterdam/ Aziatische kunst 29/4 (1999), pp. 2-23 (English summary by Patricia
Wardle pp. 24-5).
3. M. Garcin de Tassy, Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie, Paris, 1870,
2nd edn. See also: C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information; inteligence gathering and
social communication in India, 1780-1870, Cambridge, 1996, p. 201.
4. E. Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus; the pietre dure decoration and the programme of
the throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi, Graz, 1988. One
example of a depiction of the Solomonic theme in the Deccan is in a manuscript
made at the court of Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golkonda. See M. Sardar, ‘Golkonda and
the Persistence of Kakatiya Memories,’ unpublished paper at a conference on
Deccan arts at Oxford in July 2008. The theme of sages pacifying their environment,
and especially animals in their vicinity, by their sheer presence, occurs in both the
Islamicate tradition and in the Sanskritic tradition. See Koch, Op.ciL (note 4) and
J.E.M. Houben, ‘To Kill or Not to Kill the Sacred Animal (Yajna-Pasu)? arguments
and perspectives in brahminical ethical philosophy,’ in: Idem and K.M. van Kooi]
(eds.), Violence Denied; violence, non-violence and the rationalisation of violence in
South Asian cultural history, Leiden, 1999, p. 141.
5. National Archives, The Hague (NA), diary of embassy to Bijapur in dato 11.1.1637,
VOC 1122: 471v.
6. H. Cousens, Bijapur and its Architectural Remains (Imperial Series 37, Archaeological
Survey of India), Delhi, 1996 (reprint ed. 1916), pp. 29-31.
7. J. van Twist, ‘Generale beschrijvinghe van Indien,’ in Vol. 2 of I. Commelin (ed.),
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Begin ende voortgangh der Oost-Indische Compagnie, Amsterdam, 1646, p. 76. via free access106 8. L.A. van Daalen, ‘Reflections on the Enmity of Lion and Elephant and Other Poetical
Fictions in Vakpati's Gaudavaha,’ in: W. Slaje and C. Zinko (eds.), Akten des Melzer-
Symposiums 1991, Vol. 4 of Arbeiten aus derAbteilung ‘Vergleichende
SprackwissenschafV Graz, Graz, 1991, p. 71. P. Chandra, The Sculpture of India 3000
B.C. - 1300 A.D., Cambridge, MassTLondon, 1985, p. 142. C.f. O.C. Gangoly, ‘The
Story of Lion and Elephant,’ The Modem Review (Calcutta) September 1919, pp. 280-
2. For some more depictions of lions, lion-like yalis, and even a lion-headed bird,
chasing or trampling elephants in South Indian and Deccan art of this period see G.
Michell and M. Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, Cambridge,
1999, pp. 119-20, 227, 234, 236 and G. Michell, Architecture and Art of Southern
India; Vijayanagara and the Successor States, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 189-94.
9. Paramananda, The Epic of Shivaji; Kavindra Paramananda^ Sivabharata, trans.
J. Laine in collaboration with S.S. Bahulkar, Hyderabad, 2001, p. 236.
10. Paramananda, Op.ciL (note 9), pp. 83, 133, 170-1, 175, 181, 184, 215-6, 262-4,
364, quotation: p. 368.
11. C.f. the report by Henry Oxinden of the embassy to Raigarh 13.6.1674, in English
Records on Shivaji, Pune, 1931, pt. 1, p. 372 and Michell and Zebrowski, Op.ciL
(note 8), pp. 56-8.
12. It was at first not entirely clear to me what kind of animal the upper animal was,
but a comparison with a relief at Vijaynagar convinced me that it is indeed a lion, or
at least its artistic-mythical variety the yali or surul yali, with the same two lines in
the neck indicating the mane and the two circles with curvilinear shapes in them on
the upper legs indicating its furriness. Even the shape of the tail is the same.
Dallapiccola and Verghese call this animal a more subdued form of the yali, the
surul-yali, because it is not rearing on its hind legs like some other yalis at Vijaynagar
but stands firmly on the ground; they also call the roundels on its hind quarters and
shoulders ‘foliage motifs’. A.L. Dallapiccola and A. Verghese, Sculpture at
Vijaynagara; iconography and style (Vijayanagara Research Project Monograph
Series 6), Delhi, 1998, p. 105.
13. Michell, Op.ciL (note 8), pp. 155-6. L. Bes, ‘The Setupatis, The Dutch, and Other
Bandits in Eighteenth Century Ramnad (South India),’ JESHO 44 (2001), p. 566.
14. This comes out most clearly in the imagery surrounding the birth of Shivaji in canto
five, when Vishnu announces that he will be born as Shivaji to redress the
complaints of Mother Earth that she has been submitted to the mie of demons in the
form of mlecchas. Paramananda, Op.ciL (note 9), pp. 85-94. Heinrich von
Stietencron argues that the image of the boar was employed as a symbol of ‘the
deliverance from foreign oppression and the fresh foundation for ancient religion and
sacred custom (dharma)’ as early as the Gupta period in ‘Political Aspects of Indian
Religious Art,' Visible Religion 4-5 (1985-6), pp. 19-22.
15. NA, H. de Jager and N. Clement at ‘Waligondewaron’ to Pulicat (?) 10.8.1677, VOC
1328: 620v.
16. The miniatures in British Museum album 1974-6-17-011 can be dated on the basis
of the Dutch captions in combination with biographical facts we know from
elsewhere to between the death of Shivaji in 1680 and the end of the Golkonda
Sultanate in 1687 or more precisely to between May 1682 and October 1685, since
Muhammad Ibrahim is merely referred to as the Chancellor - and not General - of
Golkonda, and Madanna still seems to be alive. The portrait in Guimet is also after
the death of Shivaji, probably, based on the captions of the other Golkonda
miniatures with which it seems to form a series, between April 1683 (Sayyid
Muzaffar to the Mughals) and the death of Madanna and Akkanna in October 1685.
The Dutch captions are given in I. Stchoukine, Les Miniatures Indiennes de Vépoque
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des Grands Moghols au Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1929. In other Golkonda miniature
via free access107 series of this period (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, former
Prince of Wales Museum Mumbai) Shivaji also wears a patta with a covered handle
of a similar shape, but the details are not fully worked. In the ‘Manucci album’ in the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris the gauntlet is bejewelled but not clearly of an
animal shape. For the Golkonda albums in general and pictures of the Berlin,
Amsterdam, Guimet and Manucci Shivaji portraits see P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Het
Witsenalbum; zeventiende-eeuwse Indiase portretten op bestelling,' Bulletin van het
Rijksmuseum 44 (1996), pp. 167-254. Large pictures of the British Museum and
Mumbai Museum miniatures are in S. Doshi, Shivaji and facets of Maratha Culture,
Bombay, 1982, dust jacket and p. ix (the picture on p. x is of the Manucci Shivaji,
not the Guimet Shivaji). For the history of this period see my Xenophobia and
Consciousness; seventeenth-century identities between India’s Deccan and Europe,
Leiden, forthcoming.
17. Cousens, Op.ciL (note 6), p. 30; J. Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times, Calcutta, 1952,
5th edn., pp. 59-68.
18. T. Falk, S. Digby and M. Goedhuis, Paintings from Mughal India, London, 1979,
p. 39.
19. Ghawwasi, Tuti-nama, ed. M.S.A. Rizvi, Hyderabad, 1357 AH (1939).
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