The position of the downwards suspending hands and the cross-legged seating posture apart, the style of Lord Vishnu’s ‘jata-juta’ – coiffure, and a part of hair lying scattered on his shoulders is also the characteristic features of the Yoga Murti Vishnu. The ‘jata-juta’ replaces his most characteristic feature, his towering rich majestic crown. The artist has innovated and added many new, and symbolically very relevant, features to the classical iconography of Yoga-Narayana. Lord Vishnu’s entire body-colour is yellow, not the usual blue suggestive of his sky-like breadth and ocean-like depth, symbolising purity which is the essence of Yoga. It is said that once Vishnu lost all his ‘shaktis’ due to a curse, and hence his sky-like breadth and ocean-like depth and correspondingly his body-colour. This led him to resort to penance and Yoga-Narayana emerged. Strangely, the colour of his hands is red – the colour of fire, which destroys all impurities and lets only the pure transmit into the ‘Essential Being’ that is the ‘Self’. Further, he has been represented without his usual garland of Parijata flowers, symbol of his imperial authority, which in his Yogi posture is not relevant.
Most significant is the composition of Lord Vishnu’s figure which, while one keeps looking at, transforms into a ‘kundalini-chakra’ diagram, the graphic vision of coiled dormant psychic energies in their ascending order passing across six ‘chakras’ – circles. The two ends of the green longer strip of his waist-band symbolises the basic two Chakras – Muladhara and Svadhisthana. The narrower part of the figure’s red blouse, close to navel, is indicative of Manipur. An upside down turned flame motif consisting of yellow and black, a stylised form of Srivatsa, is symbolic of Anahata Chakra. Throat, to which the ear-pendant draws the eye, and the space between two eyes, which a red ‘tilaka’ mark identifies, are the zones of Vishuddha and Ajna Chakras. And finally, the large red flame-like motif over his ‘jata-juta’ is indicative of Sahasrara Padma, the ultimate to attain by evoking Kundalini. It is only in a folk representation, more so by a skilled Madhubani painter, that a unique transformation of the Yoga-Murti image, as in this painting, into the semblance of Kundalini-diagram is so powerfully effected.
Lakshmi, his consort, has been represented as seated on his left. Her figure has been identically conceived with four arms in two of which, the upper ones, she seems to carry some articles, in one, something like a lotus, and in the other, a peacock feather-like object. Her normal two hands are in the posture of Yoga, the same as Vishnu’s. Except for colours and design-patterns, and the length of breast-garments, as Lakshmi’s is short in length, and the style of ‘chadaras’ – sheets covering them from behind, the costumes of the two figures are identical. The figure of the blue hued elephant, Vishnu and Lakshmi are seated on, is covering almost lower half of the canvas, breadth-wise from one end to other. A simple but triply conceived border frames the painting.
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.
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