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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. From

Doshi, Shivaji and Perhaps then the ensemble at Raigarh should be read as follows: To some

Facets of Maratha enemies Shivaji is like a triumphant boar that tramples his enemies. To other

Culture (note 16) enemies Shivaji is like a lion who allows them to stay on as protected vassals (hence the pedestal under the right elephant). This is of course speculation,

Figure 5 but the importance of these reliefs should not be underestimated. Unlike

Detail of fig. 4: Patta miniature paintings, these architectural clements were there for all who with gilded gauntlet in entered Raigarh to see. They were public statements, with a much wider the shape of a boar audience than texts.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM via free access Figure 6 'Counter-symbolism' Lion fbllowed by cub (I.), inscription with sun and It seems that Shivaji’s use of the boar engendered some soit of counter- moon above it (middle) symbolism from the Bijapur-side. This is evident on the bastion built for the and lion trampling or lion gun discussed at length above. The inscription on the bastion yields the shielding an elephant date 1069 AH (1658-9 AD), during which year a large scale campaign was seconded by a monkey started against Shivaji culminating in the dispatch of Afzal Khan early in the

(r.). Relief on the next year.17 In 1658 the king was still a minor, and I think this is what we see bastion created for the in the relief to the left of the inscription: a lion cub following either his

Malik-i Maidan gun in mother, who was the regent, or his deceased father (although it must be

Bijapur, Karnataka. noted that both lion and cub are male). To the right of the inscription we see

Photograph by the a lion trampling an elephant accompanied by a monkey (fig. 6). author, December 2003 The signifïcance of the monkey is found through a Mughal miniature of circa 1600, which displays a similar monkey in a tree with a boar lying dead below. This is explained by Toby Falk and Simon Digby with a reference to a story from the lyar-i Danish, in which a monkey initially aids his friend the boar by shaking fruit from a tree, but the insatiable and ungrateful boar later tries to attack the monkey and is felled by a branch of the tree, which breaks under the boar’s weight.18 Such stories were certainly well known in the Deccan at the time. The poet laureate of Abdullah Qutb Shah of Golkonda for instance composed a Deccani Urdu rendition of the Tuti-nama (Taks of a parrot) which contains several stories of different animals killing each other.19 The monkey in the relief might, speculatively, have been employed as a counter measure against Shivaji’s boar. Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM via free access 105 Conclusion

So do these images teil us something about boundaries between groups in early modern India? On close inspection it seems that the stark opposition of animals in the images was not only about kings who were starkly opposed, but also about the groups of which they were part. Was this a way of representing clashes between groups? Does the pictorial opposition of animals mean that, in common perception, the boundaries between human groups were as clearly demarcated as that between lion and elephant? In any case the appeal of the depiction of harmony between animals (fig. 1) as a representation of the relatively harmonious multi-cultural society that the Deccan sultanates and the Mughal Empire certainly were for a long time, was only possible and necessary in a context of contained and uncontained clashes between groups.

Notes

* The author wishes to thank H.W. Bodewitz, Jos Gommans, Jan Houben and Ellen Raven for suggesting literature and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer for delving up piles of relevant images as well as literature.

1. In any case one can today admire reliefs of lions attacking oxen at Persepolis, and it seems that Iranian peoples such as the Scythians and Sarmatians carried the theme as far west as Hungary, which becomes evident from the various Scythian, Sarmatian and Avar objects in the permanent exhibition in the National Museum at Budapest. The text accompanying a particular clay vessel of the La Tene civilisation (case 16 no.10) notes that ‘images of animal fights are of Scythian origin’. 2. A. Haddad, Fables de La Fontaine d’origine oriëntale, Paris, 1984, pp. 121-6 and passim; M. Bosboom and P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Een dierfabel uit India in Amsterdam/ Aziatische kunst 29/4 (1999), pp. 2-23 (English summary by Patricia Wardle pp. 24-5). 3. M. Garcin de Tassy, Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie, Paris, 1870, 2nd edn. See also: C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information; inteligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780-1870, Cambridge, 1996, p. 201. 4. E. Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus; the pietre dure decoration and the programme of the throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi, Graz, 1988. One example of a depiction of the Solomonic theme in the Deccan is in a manuscript made at the court of Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golkonda. See M. Sardar, ‘Golkonda and the Persistence of Kakatiya Memories,’ unpublished paper at a conference on Deccan arts at Oxford in July 2008. The theme of sages pacifying their environment, and especially animals in their vicinity, by their sheer presence, occurs in both the Islamicate tradition and in the Sanskritic tradition. See Koch, Op.ciL (note 4) and J.E.M. Houben, ‘To Kill or Not to Kill the Sacred Animal (Yajna-Pasu)? arguments and perspectives in brahminical ethical philosophy,’ in: Idem and K.M. van Kooi] (eds.), Violence Denied; violence, non-violence and the rationalisation of violence in South Asian cultural history, Leiden, 1999, p. 141. 5. National Archives, The Hague (NA), diary of embassy to Bijapur in dato 11.1.1637, VOC 1122: 471v. 6. H. Cousens, Bijapur and its Architectural Remains (Imperial Series 37, Archaeological Survey of India), Delhi, 1996 (reprint ed. 1916), pp. 29-31. 7. J. van Twist, ‘Generale beschrijvinghe van Indien,’ in Vol. 2 of I. Commelin (ed.), Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM Begin ende voortgangh der Oost-Indische Compagnie, Amsterdam, 1646, p. 76. via free access 106 8. L.A. van Daalen, ‘Reflections on the Enmity of Lion and Elephant and Other Poetical Fictions in Vakpati's Gaudavaha,’ in: W. Slaje and C. Zinko (eds.), Akten des Melzer- Symposiums 1991, Vol. 4 of Arbeiten aus derAbteilung ‘Vergleichende SprackwissenschafV Graz, Graz, 1991, p. 71. P. Chandra, The Sculpture of India 3000 B.C. - 1300 A.D., Cambridge, MassTLondon, 1985, p. 142. C.f. O.C. Gangoly, ‘The Story of Lion and Elephant,’ The Modem Review (Calcutta) September 1919, pp. 280- 2. For some more depictions of lions, lion-like yalis, and even a lion-headed bird, chasing or trampling elephants in South Indian and Deccan art of this period see G. Michell and M. Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 119-20, 227, 234, 236 and G. Michell, Architecture and Art of Southern India; Vijayanagara and the Successor States, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 189-94. 9. Paramananda, The Epic of Shivaji; Kavindra Paramananda^ Sivabharata, trans. J. Laine in collaboration with S.S. Bahulkar, Hyderabad, 2001, p. 236. 10. Paramananda, Op.ciL (note 9), pp. 83, 133, 170-1, 175, 181, 184, 215-6, 262-4, 364, quotation: p. 368. 11. C.f. the report by Henry Oxinden of the embassy to Raigarh 13.6.1674, in English Records on Shivaji, Pune, 1931, pt. 1, p. 372 and Michell and Zebrowski, Op.ciL (note 8), pp. 56-8. 12. It was at first not entirely clear to me what kind of animal the upper animal was, but a comparison with a relief at Vijaynagar convinced me that it is indeed a lion, or at least its artistic-mythical variety the yali or surul yali, with the same two lines in the neck indicating the mane and the two circles with curvilinear shapes in them on the upper legs indicating its furriness. Even the shape of the tail is the same. Dallapiccola and Verghese call this animal a more subdued form of the yali, the surul-yali, because it is not rearing on its hind legs like some other yalis at Vijaynagar but stands firmly on the ground; they also call the roundels on its hind quarters and shoulders ‘foliage motifs’. A.L. Dallapiccola and A. Verghese, Sculpture at Vijaynagara; iconography and style (Vijayanagara Research Project Monograph Series 6), Delhi, 1998, p. 105. 13. Michell, Op.ciL (note 8), pp. 155-6. L. Bes, ‘The Setupatis, The Dutch, and Other Bandits in Eighteenth Century Ramnad (South India),’ JESHO 44 (2001), p. 566. 14. This comes out most clearly in the imagery surrounding the birth of Shivaji in canto five, when Vishnu announces that he will be born as Shivaji to redress the complaints of Mother Earth that she has been submitted to the mie of demons in the form of mlecchas. Paramananda, Op.ciL (note 9), pp. 85-94. Heinrich von Stietencron argues that the image of the boar was employed as a symbol of ‘the deliverance from foreign oppression and the fresh foundation for ancient religion and sacred custom (dharma)’ as early as the Gupta period in ‘Political Aspects of Indian Religious Art,' Visible Religion 4-5 (1985-6), pp. 19-22. 15. NA, H. de Jager and N. Clement at ‘Waligondewaron’ to Pulicat (?) 10.8.1677, VOC 1328: 620v. 16. The miniatures in British Museum album 1974-6-17-011 can be dated on the basis of the Dutch captions in combination with biographical facts we know from elsewhere to between the death of Shivaji in 1680 and the end of the Golkonda Sultanate in 1687 or more precisely to between May 1682 and October 1685, since Muhammad Ibrahim is merely referred to as the Chancellor - and not General - of Golkonda, and Madanna still seems to be alive. The portrait in Guimet is also after the death of Shivaji, probably, based on the captions of the other Golkonda miniatures with which it seems to form a series, between April 1683 (Sayyid Muzaffar to the Mughals) and the death of Madanna and Akkanna in October 1685. The Dutch captions are given in I. Stchoukine, Les Miniatures Indiennes de Vépoque Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:49:16PM des Grands Moghols au Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1929. In other Golkonda miniaturevia free access 107 series of this period (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, former Prince of Wales Museum Mumbai) Shivaji also wears a patta with a covered handle of a similar shape, but the details are not fully worked. In the ‘Manucci album’ in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris the gauntlet is bejewelled but not clearly of an animal shape. For the Golkonda albums in general and pictures of the Berlin, Amsterdam, Guimet and Manucci Shivaji portraits see P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Het Witsenalbum; zeventiende-eeuwse Indiase portretten op bestelling,' Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 44 (1996), pp. 167-254. Large pictures of the British Museum and Mumbai Museum miniatures are in S. Doshi, Shivaji and facets of Maratha Culture, Bombay, 1982, dust jacket and p. ix (the picture on p. x is of the Manucci Shivaji, not the Guimet Shivaji). For the history of this period see my Xenophobia and Consciousness; seventeenth-century identities between India’s Deccan and Europe, Leiden, forthcoming. 17. Cousens, Op.ciL (note 6), p. 30; J. Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times, Calcutta, 1952, 5th edn., pp. 59-68. 18. T. Falk, S. Digby and M. Goedhuis, Paintings from Mughal India, London, 1979, p. 39. 19. Ghawwasi, Tuti-nama, ed. M.S.A. Rizvi, Hyderabad, 1357 AH (1939).

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