Todi
Ragini
An inscription on the reverse
of this painting confirms it to represent Todi Ragini, the wife of Hindola, and
describes the heroine's beauty and her attraction for deer (see Appendix). Todi
Ragini is a late morning melody char-acterized by a mood of gentle adoration.
Tradition holds that it was originally a song sung by young girls to lure deer
and keep them from foraging in the village fields. Illustrations of Todi Ragini
created in the Rajasthani tradition, which is followed in Malwa Ragamalas,
typically depict a young woman in a forest carrying or playing a vina with an
attentive audience of deer and/or antelopes.
This illustration of Todi
Ragini accords with the Rajasthani tradition except for one important detail.
Just as the heroine in the Bundi Asavari Ragini (no. 32B) was recast as the
goddess Savari, so too in this painting has the ragini been deified. In this
case the goddess may be Gauri, a popular form of Siva's wife, Parvati, in her
gracious aspect as a corn goddess. This identification is suggested by the long
floral garland she wears and the gesture of benevolence she displays with her
left hand, two iconographic features associated with the goddess and unknown in
most standard representations of the ragini, in which she is shown without the
garland and handing a floral or pearl necklace to a deer instead of
gesticulating. Her blue skin implies a tribal heritage for this ragini.
Stylistically this painting
differs considerably from the Malwa folio depicting Hindola Raga from the
seventeenth century (no. 33). The abstract shapes and flat plane of the earlier
example have given way to a more representational and more three-dimensional
treatment of the landscape. Forms recede into the background and the flora- and
fauna-filled composition is much more complex. Figures are depicted in a more
accomplished and naturalistic manlier. The primal intensity of the earlier
Malwa work has dissipated, leaving the eighteenth-century painting visually
much closer to its Rajasthani peers.
Writer - Pratapaditya Pal
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