Parakiya: Confidantes Persuading Heroine to Meet the Hero

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One of the often painted aspects of the Nayika-bheda – the ages old cult of classifying heroines under various categories, mainly those in love, a theme of numerous Sanskrit and vernacular treatises and illustrative poetry for over two thousand years now, the painting represents a confidante accompanied by another, persuading a maiden, a Nayika – heroine, in the Nayika-bheda terminology, for accepting the hero’s proposal and go with them to meet him and unite with him in love in his palace where he is passionately awaiting her. The maiden, as per Nayika-bheda classification, is a ‘Parakiya’ Nayika, the heroine who indulges in love with a person other than her husband, especially when her husband is away for long time for business or war.

The painting represents two palatial buildings, one, of which a distant domed marble balcony with the hero in it, overlooking a dense garden, alone is visible, and the other, a more elaborate one, a terrace pavilion with the heroine’s beautifully wrought chamber and terrace, fountain, and garden, where the painting’s main theme is budding. The hero seems to be eagerly looking towards the heroine’s pavilion where his confidantes are persuading her for accepting his proposal. Seated against a bolster the heroine, introvert as she appears to be, is in a fix, or indifferent to what they are telling her, perhaps not knowing how to react to the proposal. She is indifferent also to things lying around her, jewellery box, rose-water contained in a jar, items of cosmetics among others, as also to the beauty of the fountain, that of the moon peeping through clouds and flowers in full bloom. As suggests the state of her mind, she has to unite in love with anyone other than her husband for the first time, and thus, she is ‘Parakiya-prathama’ – a first timer Parakiya Nayika.

With its delicately delineated figures conceived with sharp features, anatomical proportions and lustrous skin-colour, revealing elegance and grace, fine line-work, perfect execution, sense of perspective, mainly depth, and overall sophistication, besides a well defined architecture discovering its model in Mughal buildings, the painting, a fine miniature, has been rendered pursuing the models of Mughal art style of its later phase, especially as it was practised at Mughals’ provincial head-quarters like Oudh around the early part of the nineteenth century. Except that they excelled in colour-diffusion and shading, had more natural body gestures, figures glowed with vigour and life, and there enshrined a different kind of spirit, the painting has every merit to equal a Mughal masterpiece.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.