BY O. C. GANGOLY

XIV. KRISHNA AND THE MILKMAIDS

With the transference of the traditions of the Hindu school of Rajputana to the hills, valleys and recesses of the Punjab Himalayas, a new turn was given to the evolution of the Rajput school in a new atmosphere of poetry and romance, realised in the lyrical settings of the charming scenes and landscapes of the Punjab Himalayas, where the original Rajasthani pictorial tradition developed local peculiarities of novel qualities and charm. They are conveniently designated as the ‘Hill Schools of Paintings’ or Pahari qualam (‘the brush of the hills’) and have been distinguished in four distinct groups of the ‘Jummu,’ ‘Basholi,’ ‘Chamba,’ and ‘Kangra’ schools. Undoubtedly the most brilliant pages of the Hill school are contributed by the artists of the Kangra valley. They are the latest phase of the Pahari school, principally flourishing about the end of the eighteenth century and continuing well after the middle of the nineteenth. The most fundamental test of the native Indian character of the motif and expression of the Kangra school is furnished by the fact that almost every picture can be paralleled by its literary equivalent from the Hindi poets. In fact both the literary and the pictorial forms of art derive their materials from one common stock of Hindu religious culture and beliefs. Lovers of Hindi poetry are familiar with the exguisite gems of lyrics with which the Krishna cult and the Bhakti movement have embroidered the beauty of Hindi literature. Indian painting under the same inspiration attains in the Hill school of the Punjab a passionate lyricism which has hardly any parallel in the pictorial art of the world. One could take at random any picture of the Kangra school to demonstrate this unity of pictorial and literary expression. Take for example the late Kangra miniature from the collection of the South Kensington Museum, London, here reproduced.¹ It is evidently an illustration of a version of the Dana-Lila (the ‘sport of Gifts’) one of those love pranks of Krishna, in which He waylays the village milkmaids and levies the lover's toll. Here, the toll appears to have been exacted and paid already and the gallant lover is seen restoring the pots of water drawn from the neighbouring stream, and helping the gopis to carry their loads. As comments on the picture one cannot offer anything better than the verses, (translated below), of a modern Hindi poet of Oudh named Lachiram who died a few years ago (1908): -

‘My brother's wife chose the biggest jar which that wretched potter's wife gave her early this morning.

My waist, slender like a wire, bends under the load of my busts.

Tired already, I have put off the load of my anklets.

O Lachiram! This jar with its fill of water is lying too heavy for me to lift.

O my Lover dear! I beseech thee

Like a good chum, do help me to lift my jar.

In our picture, the milkmaid is really hungering for a touch of the body of Krishna and resorts to a clever pretext to accomplish her desire. The apparently accidental stretch of her right arm is seeking something else than the wretched jar and tarries too long on her lover's hip. In these pictures, the love passions of Man and Woman are transfigured and symbolized in the spiritual union of Radha and Krishna, and interpreted with a tenderness and a noble reticence which expresses more than it actually tells, and are throughout coloured by an underlying depth of religious feeling which uplifts very common anecdotes of love to the exaltation of a spiritual devotion. In their manner of presentation, the Kangra miniatures put to shade the mannered sensualities of Fragonard as also the austere lyricism of Greuze.