Nap Time in early Modern South Asia
In the process of exploring so many paintings from early modern South Asia, the sensorial details revealed abundant scents and flavours, but above all, this world gave language to the sublime concept of leisure!
Across courtyards, camp sites and forests, are depictions of figures resting under the open sky on finely crafted beds on their moonlit marble terraces, or within the security of ornately embroidered tents, or under the cool shade of banana trees in public gardens. Such visual delights made me consider my foundational intent for building Bagh-e Hind --- and inspired an offshoot that springs from my own need for recuperation after a year of constructing such a mammoth project. More on my reasoning for this offshoot can be read in Newsletter 14: Nap Time in Mughal India.
In the upcoming galleries, I invite a few scholars to select their favourite paintings depicting rest and leisure with brief commentaries on the subject.
Bharti Lalwani
Critic & Perfumer, October 2022
Canopies & Courtyards
Take a leisurely stroll through our temporary gallery until the main exhibition is ready
"The dream of Zulaykha"
from the Amber Album
Nicolas Roth selects a Mughal folio
from the 17th century
(TW: Sexual assault)
Text: Nicolas Roth
This painting illustrates a scene from the verse romance Yusuf va Zulaykha by the Persian poet Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman ‘Jami’ (1414-1492). In the Bible and the Quran, the unnamed wife of an Egyptian courtier tries to coerce the enslaved hero Joseph/Yusuf to sleep with her and then accuses him of attempted rape when he rejects her. Later Jewish and Islamic tradition names this woman Zulaykha, and several authors reimagine her as a more sympathetic figure helplessly in love with the preternaturally beautiful Yusuf.
In Jami’s work, penned around the middle of the fifteenth century, she becomes the heroine of an epic love story spanning a lifetime, with her desperate quest to win Yusuf’s affections serving as a symbol of the soul’s longing for the divine. This version of the story has enjoyed great popularity ever since; it was even translated into Sanskrit by the Kashmiri court poet Śrivara as early as the 1480s.
In the episode depicted in this painting, the young Zulaykha sees Yusuf for the first time in a dream, igniting the intense passion that will come to define her life. She is sleeping on a terrace at night, dressed in the Mughal courtly finery of the time, including a wealth of jewelry replete with pearls, emeralds, and rubies. Her dream vision of Yusuf, the epitome of male beauty, is likewise represented as a noble youth; he, too, is wearing an impressive array of pearl, emerald, and ruby necklaces, bracelets, rings, armbands, and earrings, but in addition he is holding a large sword in an ornately decorated sheath.
Yusuf’s status as a holy figure representing the divine is communicated by a radiant halo surrounding his head, emanating from the hands of two putti that emerge from the clouds in the quietly dramatic night sky. All the figures smile beatifically, conveying the silent bliss produced by Zulaykha’s rapturous vision.
The imagery is quintessentially seventeenth-century Mughal, which notably includes the obvious adaptation of European baroque aesthetics in the rendering of the sky and angels. Two particular details of the luxuriant, quite literally dreamy scene have olfactory resonances. In the foreground, the flames of two stout candles send curling columns of (scented?) smoke up into the still night air.
Perhaps more subtle is the floral pattern on the golden bolster on which Zulaykha is sleeping: the chalice-shaped pale purple flowers with red styles emerging between the petals are meant to be saffron crocuses. Not only are saffron crocuses fragrant, but saffron is considered an exhilarant and antidepressant in the Indo-Persian Unani or “Greek” medical system still influential in South Asia today. Supporting Zulaykha’s head in her slumber, this symbolic field of saffron may thus be an allusion to her receptive and exhilarated mental state as her dreams reveal a first divine glimpse of the love of her life.
(TW: Sexual assault)
Text: Nicolas Roth
This painting illustrates a scene from the verse romance Yusuf va Zulaykha by the Persian poet Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman ‘Jami’ (1414-1492). In the Bible and the Quran, the unnamed wife of an Egyptian courtier tries to coerce the enslaved hero Joseph/Yusuf to sleep with her and then accuses him of attempted rape when he rejects her. Later Jewish and Islamic tradition names this woman Zulaykha, and several authors reimagine her as a more sympathetic figure helplessly in love with the preternaturally beautiful Yusuf.
In Jami’s work, penned around the middle of the fifteenth century, she becomes the heroine of an epic love story spanning a lifetime, with her desperate quest to win Yusuf’s affections serving as a symbol of the soul’s longing for the divine. This version of the story has enjoyed great popularity ever since; it was even translated into Sanskrit by the Kashmiri court poet Śrivara as early as the 1480s.
In the episode depicted in this painting, the young Zulaykha sees Yusuf for the first time in a dream, igniting the intense passion that will come to define her life. She is sleeping on a terrace at night, dressed in the Mughal courtly finery of the time, including a wealth of jewelry replete with pearls, emeralds, and rubies. Her dream vision of Yusuf, the epitome of male beauty, is likewise represented as a noble youth; he, too, is wearing an impressive array of pearl, emerald, and ruby necklaces, bracelets, rings, armbands, and earrings, but in addition he is holding a large sword in an ornately decorated sheath.
Yusuf’s status as a holy figure representing the divine is communicated by a radiant halo surrounding his head, emanating from the hands of two putti that emerge from the clouds in the quietly dramatic night sky. All the figures smile beatifically, conveying the silent bliss produced by Zulaykha’s rapturous vision.
The imagery is quintessentially seventeenth-century Mughal, which notably includes the obvious adaptation of European baroque aesthetics in the rendering of the sky and angels. Two particular details of the luxuriant, quite literally dreamy scene have olfactory resonances. In the foreground, the flames of two stout candles send curling columns of (scented?) smoke up into the still night air.
Perhaps more subtle is the floral pattern on the golden bolster on which Zulaykha is sleeping: the chalice-shaped pale purple flowers with red styles emerging between the petals are meant to be saffron crocuses. Not only are saffron crocuses fragrant, but saffron is considered an exhilarant and antidepressant in the Indo-Persian Unani or “Greek” medical system still influential in South Asia today. Supporting Zulaykha’s head in her slumber, this symbolic field of saffron may thus be an allusion to her receptive and exhilarated mental state as her dreams reveal a first divine glimpse of the love of her life.
(TW: Sexual assault)
Text: Nicolas Roth
This painting illustrates a scene from the verse romance Yusuf va Zulaykha by the Persian poet Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman ‘Jami’ (1414-1492). In the Bible and the Quran, the unnamed wife of an Egyptian courtier tries to coerce the enslaved hero Joseph/Yusuf to sleep with her and then accuses him of attempted rape when he rejects her. Later Jewish and Islamic tradition names this woman Zulaykha, and several authors reimagine her as a more sympathetic figure helplessly in love with the preternaturally beautiful Yusuf.
In Jami’s work, penned around the middle of the fifteenth century, she becomes the heroine of an epic love story spanning a lifetime, with her desperate quest to win Yusuf’s affections serving as a symbol of the soul’s longing for the divine. This version of the story has enjoyed great popularity ever since; it was even translated into Sanskrit by the Kashmiri court poet Śrivara as early as the 1480s.
In the episode depicted in this painting, the young Zulaykha sees Yusuf for the first time in a dream, igniting the intense passion that will come to define her life. She is sleeping on a terrace at night, dressed in the Mughal courtly finery of the time, including a wealth of jewelry replete with pearls, emeralds, and rubies. Her dream vision of Yusuf, the epitome of male beauty, is likewise represented as a noble youth; he, too, is wearing an impressive array of pearl, emerald, and ruby necklaces, bracelets, rings, armbands, and earrings, but in addition he is holding a large sword in an ornately decorated sheath.
Yusuf’s status as a holy figure representing the divine is communicated by a radiant halo surrounding his head, emanating from the hands of two putti that emerge from the clouds in the quietly dramatic night sky. All the figures smile beatifically, conveying the silent bliss produced by Zulaykha’s rapturous vision.
The imagery is quintessentially seventeenth-century Mughal, which notably includes the obvious adaptation of European baroque aesthetics in the rendering of the sky and angels. Two particular details of the luxuriant, quite literally dreamy scene have olfactory resonances. In the foreground, the flames of two stout candles send curling columns of (scented?) smoke up into the still night air.
Perhaps more subtle is the floral pattern on the golden bolster on which Zulaykha is sleeping: the chalice-shaped pale purple flowers with red styles emerging between the petals are meant to be saffron crocuses. Not only are saffron crocuses fragrant, but saffron is considered an exhilarant and antidepressant in the Indo-Persian Unani or “Greek” medical system still influential in South Asia today. Supporting Zulaykha’s head in her slumber, this symbolic field of saffron may thus be an allusion to her receptive and exhilarated mental state as her dreams reveal a first divine glimpse of the love of her life.
(TW: Sexual assault)
Text: Nicolas Roth
This painting illustrates a scene from the verse romance Yusuf va Zulaykha by the Persian poet Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman ‘Jami’ (1414-1492). In the Bible and the Quran, the unnamed wife of an Egyptian courtier tries to coerce the enslaved hero Joseph/Yusuf to sleep with her and then accuses him of attempted rape when he rejects her. Later Jewish and Islamic tradition names this woman Zulaykha, and several authors reimagine her as a more sympathetic figure helplessly in love with the preternaturally beautiful Yusuf.
In Jami’s work, penned around the middle of the fifteenth century, she becomes the heroine of an epic love story spanning a lifetime, with her desperate quest to win Yusuf’s affections serving as a symbol of the soul’s longing for the divine. This version of the story has enjoyed great popularity ever since; it was even translated into Sanskrit by the Kashmiri court poet Śrivara as early as the 1480s.
In the episode depicted in this painting, the young Zulaykha sees Yusuf for the first time in a dream, igniting the intense passion that will come to define her life. She is sleeping on a terrace at night, dressed in the Mughal courtly finery of the time, including a wealth of jewelry replete with pearls, emeralds, and rubies. Her dream vision of Yusuf, the epitome of male beauty, is likewise represented as a noble youth; he, too, is wearing an impressive array of pearl, emerald, and ruby necklaces, bracelets, rings, armbands, and earrings, but in addition he is holding a large sword in an ornately decorated sheath.
Yusuf’s status as a holy figure representing the divine is communicated by a radiant halo surrounding his head, emanating from the hands of two putti that emerge from the clouds in the quietly dramatic night sky. All the figures smile beatifically, conveying the silent bliss produced by Zulaykha’s rapturous vision.
The imagery is quintessentially seventeenth-century Mughal, which notably includes the obvious adaptation of European baroque aesthetics in the rendering of the sky and angels. Two particular details of the luxuriant, quite literally dreamy scene have olfactory resonances. In the foreground, the flames of two stout candles send curling columns of (scented?) smoke up into the still night air.
Perhaps more subtle is the floral pattern on the golden bolster on which Zulaykha is sleeping: the chalice-shaped pale purple flowers with red styles emerging between the petals are meant to be saffron crocuses. Not only are saffron crocuses fragrant, but saffron is considered an exhilarant and antidepressant in the Indo-Persian Unani or “Greek” medical system still influential in South Asia today. Supporting Zulaykha’s head in her slumber, this symbolic field of saffron may thus be an allusion to her receptive and exhilarated mental state as her dreams reveal a first divine glimpse of the love of her life.
(TW: Sexual assault)
Text: Nicolas Roth
This painting illustrates a scene from the verse romance Yusuf va Zulaykha by the Persian poet Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman ‘Jami’ (1414-1492). In the Bible and the Quran, the unnamed wife of an Egyptian courtier tries to coerce the enslaved hero Joseph/Yusuf to sleep with her and then accuses him of attempted rape when he rejects her. Later Jewish and Islamic tradition names this woman Zulaykha, and several authors reimagine her as a more sympathetic figure helplessly in love with the preternaturally beautiful Yusuf.
In Jami’s work, penned around the middle of the fifteenth century, she becomes the heroine of an epic love story spanning a lifetime, with her desperate quest to win Yusuf’s affections serving as a symbol of the soul’s longing for the divine. This version of the story has enjoyed great popularity ever since; it was even translated into Sanskrit by the Kashmiri court poet Śrivara as early as the 1480s.
In the episode depicted in this painting, the young Zulaykha sees Yusuf for the first time in a dream, igniting the intense passion that will come to define her life. She is sleeping on a terrace at night, dressed in the Mughal courtly finery of the time, including a wealth of jewelry replete with pearls, emeralds, and rubies. Her dream vision of Yusuf, the epitome of male beauty, is likewise represented as a noble youth; he, too, is wearing an impressive array of pearl, emerald, and ruby necklaces, bracelets, rings, armbands, and earrings, but in addition he is holding a large sword in an ornately decorated sheath.
Yusuf’s status as a holy figure representing the divine is communicated by a radiant halo surrounding his head, emanating from the hands of two putti that emerge from the clouds in the quietly dramatic night sky. All the figures smile beatifically, conveying the silent bliss produced by Zulaykha’s rapturous vision.
The imagery is quintessentially seventeenth-century Mughal, which notably includes the obvious adaptation of European baroque aesthetics in the rendering of the sky and angels. Two particular details of the luxuriant, quite literally dreamy scene have olfactory resonances. In the foreground, the flames of two stout candles send curling columns of (scented?) smoke up into the still night air.
Perhaps more subtle is the floral pattern on the golden bolster on which Zulaykha is sleeping: the chalice-shaped pale purple flowers with red styles emerging between the petals are meant to be saffron crocuses. Not only are saffron crocuses fragrant, but saffron is considered an exhilarant and antidepressant in the Indo-Persian Unani or “Greek” medical system still influential in South Asia today. Supporting Zulaykha’s head in her slumber, this symbolic field of saffron may thus be an allusion to her receptive and exhilarated mental state as her dreams reveal a first divine glimpse of the love of her life.