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The Disciple of the Yogini “Swallowed up” by the Tiger: Asceticism and Eremitic Life in Indian Painting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2022

ROSELYNE HUREL
ROSELYNE HUREL*
Affiliation:
Independent scholar
*
roselyne.a.hurel@gmail.com
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Abstract

The long tradition of asceticism in India has an extensive iconography. It usually represents a poor and emaciated man, living on his own, occasionally with wild animals for company. Hindu and Muslim art and literature contain many such scenes, but female ascetics or yoginis only rarely appear. However, there is a seventeenth-century miniature in the Rietberg Museum which depicts the well-known subject of a young disciple visiting her guru. Seated together in a landscape in front of a thatched hut, they are surrounded by precisely painted Ustad Mansur-style flora and fauna. It was customary practice in Indian workshops for artists to copy original works by their masters, and to make versions using a stencil or charba. This particular miniature has been recreated several times. In the earliest, the two yoginis are placed in the same setting with their modest possessions. The topos remained popular until the end of the eighteenth century when a change occurred: the disciple of the old yogini disappeared, having been “swallowed up” by a tiger. Instead of two mystics talking together, the scene depicted is that of a tiger near a hermit, a typical Ragamala image known as Bengali Ragini. These new compositions were readily acquired by European collectors. A final version also exists that derives from the original Mughal topos which depicts the three: hermit, tiger, and…disciple.

Keywords

AsceticBengali Raginiyoginis
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 4: Studies in Honour of Barbara Brend , October 2022 , pp. 982 - 1002
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society

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Footnotes

I am deeply grateful to Diana Scarisbrick who has translated the text of this article from the French, and also to friends and colleagues who have so kindly helped and encouraged me with this project: Mehreen Chida-Razvi, Anna L. Dallapiccola, Marie-Christine David (†), Véronique Goarin, Henry Noltie, Alison Ohta, Diana Scarisbrick, Emily Shovelton, and Caroline Widmer.

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