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CHAMBA OR BILASPUR, PUNJAB HILLS, NORTH INDIA, CIRCA 1690-1700 Opaque pigments heightened with gold and silver on paper, two noblemen duel with swords in a landscape, within black and white rules on wide red margins, verso inscribed with a line of gurmukhi, takri, and devanagari, each identifying the raga, bearing the Mandi royal collection stamp and the numerals '70' above Painting 7 3/8 x 4 ?in. (18.7 x 12cm.); folio 8 ? x 6 1/8in. (21.5 x 15.6cm.)
In the Pahari tradition, Surmanand, son of Hindol raga, is illustrated as two warriors duelling with swords. The iconography of the present painting can be compared to a drawing illustrated in Ebeling, 1973, p.296, no.384 which also depicts Surmanand ragaputra as two warriors with raised swords and shields. For a slightly later comparable illustration from Guler, dated circa 1760, see Rajput Miniatures from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd, exhibition catalogue, Portland Art Museum, Portland, 1968, no.84, p.110. Although present in the Pahari iconographic tradition and based on the medieval priest Mesakarna’s classification of the ragamala system, this visual depiction finds no similarity in Mesakarna’s textual descriptions of the various ragas and their families.
This painting is part of a well-known ragamala series from a dispersed album which was once in the Mandi royal collection. Along with ragamala illustrations, the album also included a Dasavatara (Ten Incarnations of Vishnu) series. The original place of production of the album, whether Chamba or Bilaspur, has been debated by scholars. After a recent study of illustrations from the Moscatelli collection, noting a particular style of Chamba turban in some folios, Catherine Glynn attributed the album to the court of Chamba (Glynn and Skelton, Dallapiccola, 2011, p.34). J. P. Losty notes a heavy influence of Mughal and Deccani painting, the prevalence of vertical format ragamalas from Bilaspur, the style of rendering the eyes of figures almost three-dimensionally, amongst other evidence, and argues for Bilaspur as the origin for the album (Losty, 2017, pp.226-227). For further folios from this album, see Losty, 2017, nos. 60, 62, pp. 228-229; Glynn, Skelton, Dallapiccola, 2011, nos.7-9, pp.52-57; and McInerney, Kossak, Najat-Haidar, 2016, nos. 45-48, pp.142-149.
For folios from this series which have sold in these Rooms, see 24 October 2019, lot 79; 2 May 2019, lot 140; 25 May 2017, lots 22-23; 26 May 2016, lots 61-62; 25 April 2013, lot 184; Christie’s, South Kensington, 10 June 2013, lots 2-7; Christie’s, New York, 18 September 2013, lot 357A.