0 Gijs Kruijtzer IDENTIFYING ANIMALS IN THE APPLIED ARTS OF INDIA’S DECCAN PLATEAU ANIMALS What follows is a discussion of the use of images of animals in the 17th century in the Deccan Plateau (Central India) in the context of identity and group boundaries. Since Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer has taken great pains to show me that the striking use of animal symbolism in the Deccan in the 17th century was nothing new, I should start by pointing out that depictions of animals in India formed part of two artistic traditions. Firstly the tradition in the visual arts of representing fighting animals, which goes back to the ancient Iranian peoples who seem to have spread it far and wide.1 Secondly the tradition of telling stories about animals which also goes back millennia and also has a complex history of borrowing between East, West and Middle East.2 In a way, however, animal symbolism was always new, because it IDENTIFYING referred to the social context of the age. More precisely, and as M. Garcin de Tassy remarks in the introduction to his history of Hindustani literature, ‘oriental’ animal fables were not only fun, but also thoroughly political, and an indirect way of expressing political truths and aspirations.3 My intention is therefore to venture some political interpretations of animal symbolism employed in architecture and other applied arts of the Deccan and to show how such symbolism speaks volumes of the identity issues then current. Perhaps, also, it can teil us something about the fuzziness or sharpness of group boundaries. Peace and violence The depictions of animals in the Deccan moved between the two extremes of violence and peace. On the one hand we see the theme of animals living in harmony under the mier of the age, whose very presence pacified his realm, like a second Solomon. This theme was perhaps developed furthest at the Mughal court in the first half of the 17th century (fig. 1), which has been marvellously analysed and illustrated by Ebba Koch, but it was also depicted and narrated in the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur and Golkonda, to the south of the Mughal empire.4 In 1637 Johan van Twist arrived in the Deccan as a Dutch ambassador, to convince the Sultan of Bijapur to launch a joint offensive against the Portuguese in Goa, during which the Dutch would attack from the sea side and the Bijapuris from the land side. However, one of the first officials to whom he spoke, well before he arrived at the court, told him that his mission would be quite pointless, because: ‘The King of Bijapur’s land is an enclosed wilderness, in which lions, boars and tigers must live together in peace.’5 That is to say, the Dutch and the Portuguese, and any others established in Bijapur had to abide by a soit of Pax Bijapurica. Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM via free access 100 4 1 Figure i Lion and cow living in peace under royal protection. Detail of the throne of Mughal ai emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628-66) as depicted by an anonymous contemporary painter in a Bodleian Library miniature. From Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus (see note 4) However, the ‘Solomonic’ symbolism derived its power partly from its opposite, the symbolism of animal fights. An important example is the gun Figure 2 cast for the sultan of Ahmadnagar in 1549 (fig. 2). lts muzzle has the shape Lion mauling a tame of a lion’s head devouring a tame elephant along with its goad (which shows elephant. The muzzle of that it was a tame elephant). The gun was transferred to Bijapur after the the Malik-i Maidan gun Bijapur sultan had divided Ahmadnagar with the Mughals in the 1620s.6 in Bijapur, Karnataka. It seems that the voracious symbolism of the gun was not wasted on 17th- Photograph by the century Bijapurians and was possibly interpreted in terms of a perceived author, December 2003 struggle between the Muslim-ruled sultanates and Hindus. This is certainly Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM via free access 101 the impression one gets from the story, more than likely apocryphal but nonetheless significant, which Johan van Twist related of the casting of the gun in the printed digest of his ambassadorial journey. Van Twist identified the maker of the gun as a Roman (obviously a misinterpretation of the word Rumi, ‘Ottoman’, which is used in an inscription on the gun to refer to the maker) and said that this Roman not only sacrificed his own son to the gun but also refused to be paid, and in lieu of payment threw the king’s Hindu (Brahmin) accountant, who had come to enquire about the payment, into a fire prepared in the casting pit, adding somewhat enigmatically ‘that the fire that had digested the money and copper would give him the bill\7 Lions crushing elephants However, we see the same symbolism of lions attacking elephants employed by Hindu kings. The lion-crushing-elephant theme seems to have developed in ancient India out of the general Iranian animal-fights symbolism - occurring for instance a few times in Kalidasa’s poetry of the high Gupta era - and is said to symbolise the victory of celestial light over chthonic darkness.8 In the 17th century, Shivaji, the Maratha king who fought both the Mughals and Bijapur, also employed that symbolism. In any case Shivaji was identified with a lion throughout the poetic history of his life composed by his court poet Paramananda. To quote one example from the description of the confrontation between Shivaji and Afzal Khan, a general of Bijapur: ‘By entering the terrible forest of Javli / the home of me, the lion / my enemy Afzal, the elephant / will come unto his death’. In another passage describing the same confrontation Shivaji is not only likened to a lion but his beard to an elephant goad (with which he can tame Afzal).9 In his epic history of Shivaji, Paramananda compared both Muslim and Maratha enemies to elephants, who tried to oppose the lion Shivaji. Paramananda constantly compared warriors of all parties to lions and rutting elephants and their war-cries to the roars of lions and the bellowing of elephants, but mostly he likened Shivaji and his father Shahji, and sometimes their adherents, to lions, and their opponents to elephants. Many of the ‘elephants’ in the text were Maratha commanders like Suryaji Rao who ‘turned his mind to the contest / [he faced] with wild Shivaji, as [if he were] an elephant / [about to fight] a lion.’ So all enemies of Shivaji were elephants, since enemies were ipso facto the adharma (that which goes against the divine order) of a kingdom, as Paramananda put it.10 Shivaji and the boar So far, Shivaji seems merely to have been employing a cliché used by all parties in the Deccan, but on a gate at Raigarh fortress, the site of Shivaji’s enthronement, we also see an image (fig. 3) that in my view is a boar trampling an elephant. It is part of what seem to be the original battlements built by Shivaji.11 lts counterpart is again a lion, or at least its artistic- mythical variety the yali or surul yali, holding its paw over an elephant on a pedestal.12 How may we read the ensemble of these two reliefs? With the use of the boar as a symbol Shivaji put himself in a tradition of Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM Hindu kings whö employed the same symbol, most notably the kings ofvia free access Figure 3a, b and c Boar trampling an elephant (I.) and lion protecting or suppressing an elephant on a pedestal (r.), reliefs above the entrance of Raigarh fortress, Maharashtra. Photograph by the author, December 2003 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM via free access 103 Vijaynagar, whose emblem was a boar and sword accompanied by the sun and moon (the sun and the moon signifying eternity, as in the phrase ‘as long as the sun and moon will shine’).13 The primaeval boar Varaha is the incarnation of Vishnu that saved the world from a demon enemy of the gods, and Shivaji's use of this boar symbolism must be seen as expression of his relation to his arch-enemies, for although all enemies of Shivaji were adharmic in Paramananda’s view, some were truly demonie. Paramananda wrote that Shivaji had descended to earth as an incarnation of Vishnu to rid the earth of mlecchas, impure barbarians, who were in this case Muslims, as is clearly evident from the context, especially the sultan of Bijapur and the Mughal Emperor.14 We also see the image of the boar on the patta or gauntlet sword that Shivaji wears in some of the miniature portraits made of him. He seems to have worn such a gilded patta very often, as a description of a visit to Shivaji in the Dutch East India Company archives also mentions him wearing one.15 Such pattas are also seen with elephant heads at the handle but the one Shivaji is wearing in two of his miniature portraits clearly has a boar’s head. One of these so-called ‘Golkonda’ miniatures is in the British Museum and can be dated to just after the death of Shivaji on the basis of the captions of the Figure 4 (below left) complete series of which it forms a part (figs. 4 and 5). Another contemporary Anonymous miniature miniature in which the handle is clearly depicted as a gilded boar is in the portrait of Shivaji in the Musée Guimet.16 British Museum.