North India, Indo-Gangetic Plain region Mid-nineteenth century, · circa 1850

An Illustrated Sanskrit Devotional Manuscript Centred upon the Bhagavad Gītā

USD 32,000

Sanskrit in Devanāgarī, manuscript on paper With many painted miniatures and illuminated pages, pigments and gilt. Bhagavadgītā substantially complete, together with portions of the Śrīmad Bhāgavata and other Sanskrit devotional texts Opening and concluding sequence presently under further collation.

Bhagavad Geeta, Gita

A remarkably extensive nineteenth-century North Indian Sanskrit devotional manuscript, centred upon the Bhagavadgītā, the celebrated dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna embedded in the Bhīṣmaparvan of the Mahābhārata. Written throughout by hand in a bold and highly assured Devanāgarī script, the manuscript is embellished with rubrication, coloured rules and a substantial sequence of miniature paintings, several enriched with metallic or gilt decoration.

Preliminary collation establishes that the greater part of the eighteen chapters of the Bhagavadgītā survives. Portions at the beginning, apparently including material from the first adhyāya, and portions toward the conclusion of the eighteenth adhyāya may presently be wanting, although a number of loose leaves remain to be fully ordered and may restore part of the apparent opening lacuna. The manuscript should therefore presently be described conservatively as substantially complete, pending full foliation and verse-by-verse collation.

One of the photographed openings provides unusually clear internal evidence for the identification. The text is arranged within finely ruled orange-red frames, with the Sanskrit copied in dense black ink and significant divisions and concluding formulae picked out emphatically in vermilion. Among these appears the familiar chapter-ending formula beginning “iti śrīmadbhagavadgītāsu upaniṣatsu brahmavidyāyāṃ yogaśāstre…”, placing the identity of the principal text beyond reasonable doubt.

Yet the manuscript is considerably more interesting than a copy of the Gītā alone.

Examination of the surviving leaves indicates that the volume was conceived as a larger Vaiṣṇava devotional anthology. Alongside the Bhagavadgītā occur passages associated with the Śrīmad Bhāgavata and further invocations, hymns and devotional texts of the kind incorporated into household recitation and personal worship. This apparently heterogeneous construction is in fact entirely consistent with Indian manuscript practice: a sacred codex could gather together texts intended not simply to be read, but to be recited, worshipped, contemplated and transmitted within a devotional household.

A particularly illuminating parallel is preserved in the Morgan Library & Museum. Its MS G.70, produced probably in Kashmir during the second half of the eighteenth century, comprises 398 leaves and 22 miniatures. The Bhagavadgītā occupies only part of that manuscript and is accompanied by the Viṣṇusahasranāma, Bhīṣmastavarāja, Gajendramokṣa, Upaniṣadic material, several stotras, kavacas and further devotional texts. The comparison is important: it suggests that the present manuscript may properly be understood not simply as an illustrated Bhagavadgītā, but as a portable corpus of Vaiṣṇava devotion organised around the Gītā.

The paintings

The manuscript is distinguished particularly by its painted programme.

The representative miniature examined here is framed by an unusually exuberant ornamental border of flowering vines, alternating blue reserves and pink, orange and gilt floral forms. Within it, the figures are rendered in brilliant opaque colour—vermilion, pink, green, yellow and blue—with strong linear definition and an emphatically devotional rather than naturalistic pictorial language.

The combination of Devanāgarī manuscript, strong red rubrication, coloured framing lines, opaque miniature painting, floral ornament and gilding belongs comfortably within the North Indian manuscript tradition. A more precise localisation to Kashmir, Punjab or another northern centre should await comparison of the complete series of miniatures, paper, pigments and scribal forms. For the present, “North India, probably Kashmir–Punjab region, circa 1850” is an appropriately cautious working attribution.

The illustrated programme also appears to extend beyond literal representations of the battlefield discourse between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. This too finds parallels in surviving illustrated Gītās, where depictions of Viṣṇu, his avatāras and episodes from wider Vaiṣṇava mythology frequently accompany the text.

An unusual survivor

Illustrated manuscript copies of the Bhagavadgītā survive, but the important examples are disproportionately concentrated in institutional collections.

The British Library, Or 13758, dated 1824, preserves the complete Sanskrit Bhagavadgītā from the Aurangabad district, accompanied by twenty-two miniatures illustrating episodes from the Mahābhārata and the avatāras of Viṣṇu. It was subsequently owned by the Sanskrit scholar Sir Monier Monier-Williams.

The Morgan Library's MS G.70, probably Kashmir, second half of the eighteenth century, contains 398 leaves and twenty-two miniatures and, significantly, combines the Bhagavadgītā with numerous other Hindu devotional works. The Morgan also preserves MS W.15, produced probably in Kashmir between about 1780 and 1799, comprising Bhagavadgītā excerpts ornamented with eighteen miniatures, each enclosed within gold-framed octagonal decoration.

At the University of Edinburgh, Or Ms 674, dated Vikrama Saṃvat 1876 (1819–1820), takes the unusual form of a paper scroll more than 3.7 metres long and contains twenty-two illuminations in gold-framed cartouches.

A further manuscript now in the Morgan, MS M.1183, is particularly relevant chronologically: dated circa 1850 and probably Kashmiri, it combines material from the Bhagavadgītā and Mahābhārata in 251 folios, written in Devanāgarī using black, red and gold, and contains five full-page miniatures together with decorated textual pages.

Edition

First edition

Status

Available