Allah Baksh's magnificent miniature paintings of Vyasa's great epic, the Mahabharata, were commissioned by Udaipur's Maharana, Jai Singh and painted between 1680 and 1698. The selection of nearly 2000 paintings, published in four volumes, are from a folio of more than 4000 extant works illuminating the Mahabharata. The fifth volume of 500 paintings devoted to the Gita has already been published.
These radiant miniatures, which follow almost every story in every chapter of the Mahabharata, have no precedent in India's art tradition. The emphasis in these paintings is not on heroic posturing and spiritual pride, but on the pain that the earth and its creatures endure when human beings tragically fail to fulfil their dharma. The images in the paintings are symbolically charged, their colours are clear and luminous, their lines are restrained and precise. Allah Baksh's art of visionary thoughtfulness deserves an honoured place in the great library of Indian scriptures and their visual interpretations.
Introductions to the parvas in these four volumes offer reflections on the moral resonance of the stories, as they reveal the fate of a civilisation from its divine beginning to its fateful destruction. The Hindi translation of the Mewari text in the colophons, describing the particular story being illustrated, furthers our understanding of the history of cultural exchange between the different religions, regions and languages of India. Comments on the paintings in English enable the reader to decode the images and follow the narrative grandeur of this great Indian epic.
Alok Bhalla is a widely published critic, translator and poet. He has taught in various universities in the US and India, and has held Fellowships from different academic institutes in France, Italy, England, Germany, Canada and Israel. His books include Stories about the Partition of India (4 volumes), Partition Dialogues, Shades of the Preternatural (on Gothic fiction), The Politics of Atrocity and Lust (on the Vampire tale) and The Life and Times of Saadat Hasan Manto. He has also co-edited and translated Intizar Husain's A Chronicle of the Peacocks, Day and Dastan and Story is a Vagabond. His verse translation of Dharamvir Bharati's play, Andha Yug, is a recognised classic.
Chandra Prakash Deval was born in Udaipur. An eminent poet, fiction writer, translator, bibliophile, and cultural historian, he has published 14 collections of poetry in Hindi and Rajasthani. He has also translated the works of Ashok Vajpeyi, Ramakanth Rath and others into Rajasthani. He has been the recipient of many prestigious literary awards like the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1979 for his poetry collection, Paagi, and the Bihari Puruskar for Hirna! Maun Saadh Van Charana in 2013. The Government of India bestowed the Padma Shri on him in recognition of his contributions to literature in 2011. At present, he is actively involved in the development of Rajasthani language and literature.
Vedas (1182)
Upanishads (493)
Puranas (624)
Ramayana (741)
Mahabharata (354)
Dharmasastras (165)
Goddess (496)
Bhakti (242)
Saints (1503)
Gods (1290)
Shiva (370)
Journal (187)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (362)
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