Maharaja Man Singh Ji of Jodhpur Visits the Mahamandir Marwar ca. 1815 Maharaja Man Singh folds his hands in devoted prayer to a surprisingly lifelike statue of the Hindu saint Jalandhar Nath, which rests on a thronelike pedestal. The maharaja stands at the heart of the Mahamandir (Great Temple) which he had built not long before this painting was made. The temple is surrounded by an arcade that separates the sacred spaces within from the worldly spaces outside. Smaller buildings and numerous courtiers fill the grounds, while the vibrant floral border locates the temple in a gardenlike suburb outside the city of Jodhpur. The buildings and people are depicted from many viewpoints, including profile and birds-eye views. According to this system of representation, people and objects are accurately positioned within the overall layout, but the angle from which they are seen is determined by the viewpoint that makes them most recognizable. This uncommonly large painting depicts a bird’s-eye overview of the Mahamandir (Great Temple) near Jodhpur, the royal capital of Marwar state. The temple’s residential dependencies, marketplaces, and adjoining palace and garden fill the wide green expanse that borders three of its sides. The temple and its neighborhood, comprising 1,000 houses and 112 shops, were enclosed within a stone wall a mile and a quarter in circumference, and located about a mile northeast of Jodhpur on the road to Mandor. Today, the temple and its palace still exist, but the surrounding area, a former garden suburb, has become an overbuilt extension of Jodhpur itself. In this sylvan overview dated A.D. 1815, Maharaja Man Singh (reigned 1803–43) stands in the Mahamandir courtyard, flanked by three officers of his court (identified in the inscription as Dhandhal Govardhandas, Khichi Umo, and Gehlot Jivandas). With hands clasped in reverence, Man Singh is paying homage to the surprisingly lifelike image of the yogic saint Jalandhar Nath (c. A.D. 1050), which is enshrined in the temple’s inner sanctum. The maharaja is attended by four hereditary officers of the Mahamandir trust: the head priest (mahant), Devnath, holding a peacock-feather fan (morchal); Bhimnath, his brother; and Likhminath (or Laxminath) and Ladunath, the sons of Bhimnath and Devnath, respectively. This family resided in the courtyard palace that is depicted in smaller scale in the upper left of the picture. The maharaja’s enormous cavalcade—169 retainers on elephant, camel, horse, and foot—stands at attention in empty spaces on three sides of the temple’s perimeter wall. Their orderly configurations mimic, yet in mirror reverse, the staggered interplay of buildings depicted in topographical format on the remaining sides. This grandly structured composition converges on the figure of Jalandhar Nath: his face marks its exact center. Intensified by a background of soft color, a vibrant rectangle of red and gold focuses attention on the room where Jalandhar Nath is enthroned. Veneration of Jalandhar Nath and loyalty to Devnath, his priest, were the primary passions of Man Singh’s reign. He had acquired his devotion in Jalor, a town eighty miles south of Jodhpur, where he lived from the age of nine to twenty. Jalor was at once a stronghold of noblemen allied against Man Singh’s uncle, Maharaja Bhim Singh (reigned 1793–1803), and the chief site of the Natha cult in Marwar. The local Jalandhar Nath temple was under the care of Devnath, who became Man Singh’s trusted friend. When Man Singh inherited the throne in 1803, he made Devnath his spiritual guru and principal advisor, and built the Mahamandir to honor Jalandhar Nath. Devnath and his family were installed in the adjoining palace, and the complex was furnished with houses and shops to provide income for their upkeep. Attributed to Bulaki Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:37:23 +0000