Nap Time in early Modern South Asia
Curator's note: In the process of exploring numerous paintings from early modern South Asia, the sensorial details revealed abundant scents and flavours, but significantly, this world dedicated a 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 terraces, or within the security of ornately embroidered tents, or under the cool shade of banana trees in gardens. Such visual delights made me consider my foundational intent for building Bagh-e Hind and inspired an offshoot that springs from my own pursuit of leisure and aimless "time-pass". More on my reasoning for this offshoot can be read in Newsletter 14: Nap Time in Mughal India.
In the following galleries, three scholars select their favourite paintings depicting deep slumber, rest and leisure and offer insightful nap-time stories.
September 2022
Canopies & Courtyards
Take a leisurely stroll through a painted landscape of deep sleep
The King of Hind, Landhaur bin Sa‘dān, lay sleeping on a bed of marble in the shade of a tree on a hot day. He wore an orange jama and a green-green pair of pajamas, his light-white-turbanned head resting on a pillow. There came a white demon (de'o) wearing a floral mini-skirt. Their horns were crooked, their beard was the bee's knees. With dirty yet shapely hands they heaved the slumbering Landhaur's bedstead above their head, carrying it away across the rugged pinkish wilderness pocked with tufts and ornamented with rocks surmounted by plants with yellow-bordered leaves.
Unawakened by the alarm bells hanging from the demon's horns, the jingle bells on their wrists and shins and around their neck, the prince clutched his blankie, blue like the sea, or like the tiny flowers beneath the demon's legs. He wasn't bothered. He turned over in his sleep.
The Tale of Amīr Hamza (Qissa-i Amīr Hamza or Hamza-nāma) and his sidekicks including the trickster ‘Amar ‘Ayyār, the archer Muqbil, and princes such as Landhaur, was told by storytellers from the Safavid to the Mughal domains (Khan, 23-24). The Mughal Emperor Akbar had a sumptuous illustrated text produced around the 1560s CE, whose folios are now scattered across the world, like this one in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Arts (MAK B.I. 8770/19), which was painted by Dasavanta, the floral patterns and other flourishes added by Shravana (Seyller 94-95).
Other illustrations from the imperial Hamza-nāma are matched with pages of writing. But, as Zahra Faridany-Akhavan's 1989 dissertation pointed out, this image in the collection of the MAK is a recto (VIENNA 5r) that is backed by nothing but plain brown paper, possibly indicating the end of a volume (Faridany-Akhavan 53). Glück, Faridany-Akhavan, and Seyller all seem to be unaware, therefore, of the story of Landhaur and the demon, which does not appear in the published Persian Hamza-nāma.
Some variation of it appears, however, in the relatively short Urdu versions that were produced by the storyteller Khalīl ‘Alī Khān Ashk, and then by Ghālib Lakhnawī.
In the midst of a great war that Landhaur was fighting on behalf of Amīr Hamzah, a storm blew, and an enormous claw descended from the heavens and carried the King of Hind into the Land of Qāf. It was the parī Princess Rāshida Parī, who sought Landhaur's aid against White Demon, who was besotted with her, and who had kidnapped her father Rāshid Jinn when she rejected his suit. She also thought Landhaur was cute. Landhaur rescued Rāshid, imprisoned White Demon in a cave, and married Rāshida. But the wily Pillowhead Demon saw their chance one day while Landhaur was asleep beneath a tree's shade. Picking up the Prince they cast him into the cave and freed White Demon (Ghālib Lakhnawī 583-584).
It is possible that in the Persian version with which Akbar was familiar, the White Demon themself was the jailor of the slumberous King of Hind. Note that this image is very similar to the many depictions of the Shāhnāmah hero Rustam being carried by his foe the Akvān Demon to be cast into the sea (Firdausī 299-302).
Works Cited:
Ashk, Khalīl ‘Alī Khān. Dāstān-i Amīr Hamzah. 4 vols. [Originally published 1801]. Bombay: Matba‘-i Haidarī, 1863.
Faridany-Akhavan, Zahra. ‘The Problems of the Mughal Manuscript of the Hamza-Nama: 1562-1577: A Reconstruction’. PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989.
Firdausī, Abū'l-Qāsim. The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. Translated by Dick Davis. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
Ghālib Lakhnawī, Mirzā Amān Allāh, and ‘Abdullāh Husain Bilgrāmī. The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction. [Original published 1855]. Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. 1st ed. New York: Modern Library, 2007.
Khan, Pasha M. The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019.
Seyller, John William, and W. M Thackston. The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 2002.
The King of Hind, Landhaur bin Sa‘dān, lay sleeping on a bed of marble in the shade of a tree on a hot day. He wore an orange jama and a green-green pair of pajamas, his light-white-turbanned head resting on a pillow. There came a white demon (de'o) wearing a floral mini-skirt. Their horns were crooked, their beard was the bee's knees. With dirty yet shapely hands they heaved the slumbering Landhaur's bedstead above their head, carrying it away across the rugged pinkish wilderness pocked with tufts and ornamented with rocks surmounted by plants with yellow-bordered leaves.
Unawakened by the alarm bells hanging from the demon's horns, the jingle bells on their wrists and shins and around their neck, the prince clutched his blankie, blue like the sea, or like the tiny flowers beneath the demon's legs. He wasn't bothered. He turned over in his sleep.
The Tale of Amīr Hamza (Qissa-i Amīr Hamza or Hamza-nāma) and his sidekicks including the trickster ‘Amar ‘Ayyār, the archer Muqbil, and princes such as Landhaur, was told by storytellers from the Safavid to the Mughal domains (Khan, 23-24). The Mughal Emperor Akbar had a sumptuous illustrated text produced around the 1560s CE, whose folios are now scattered across the world, like this one in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Arts (MAK B.I. 8770/19), which was painted by Dasavanta, the floral patterns and other flourishes added by Shravana (Seyller 94-95).
Other illustrations from the imperial Hamza-nāma are matched with pages of writing. But, as Zahra Faridany-Akhavan's 1989 dissertation pointed out, this image in the collection of the MAK is a recto (VIENNA 5r) that is backed by nothing but plain brown paper, possibly indicating the end of a volume (Faridany-Akhavan 53). Glück, Faridany-Akhavan, and Seyller all seem to be unaware, therefore, of the story of Landhaur and the demon, which does not appear in the published Persian Hamza-nāma.
Some variation of it appears, however, in the relatively short Urdu versions that were produced by the storyteller Khalīl ‘Alī Khān Ashk, and then by Ghālib Lakhnawī.
In the midst of a great war that Landhaur was fighting on behalf of Amīr Hamzah, a storm blew, and an enormous claw descended from the heavens and carried the King of Hind into the Land of Qāf. It was the parī Princess Rāshida Parī, who sought Landhaur's aid against White Demon, who was besotted with her, and who had kidnapped her father Rāshid Jinn when she rejected his suit. She also thought Landhaur was cute. Landhaur rescued Rāshid, imprisoned White Demon in a cave, and married Rāshida. But the wily Pillowhead Demon saw their chance one day while Landhaur was asleep beneath a tree's shade. Picking up the Prince they cast him into the cave and freed White Demon (Ghālib Lakhnawī 583-584).
It is possible that in the Persian version with which Akbar was familiar, the White Demon themself was the jailor of the slumberous King of Hind. Note that this image is very similar to the many depictions of the Shāhnāmah hero Rustam being carried by his foe the Akvān Demon to be cast into the sea (Firdausī 299-302).
Works Cited:
Ashk, Khalīl ‘Alī Khān. Dāstān-i Amīr Hamzah. 4 vols. [Originally published 1801]. Bombay: Matba‘-i Haidarī, 1863.
Faridany-Akhavan, Zahra. ‘The Problems of the Mughal Manuscript of the Hamza-Nama: 1562-1577: A Reconstruction’. PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989.
Firdausī, Abū'l-Qāsim. The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. Translated by Dick Davis. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
Ghālib Lakhnawī, Mirzā Amān Allāh, and ‘Abdullāh Husain Bilgrāmī. The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction. [Original published 1855]. Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. 1st ed. New York: Modern Library, 2007.
Khan, Pasha M. The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019.
Seyller, John William, and W. M Thackston. The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 2002.
The King of Hind, Landhaur bin Sa‘dān, lay sleeping on a bed of marble in the shade of a tree on a hot day. He wore an orange jama and a green-green pair of pajamas, his light-white-turbanned head resting on a pillow. There came a white demon (de'o) wearing a floral mini-skirt. Their horns were crooked, their beard was the bee's knees. With dirty yet shapely hands they heaved the slumbering Landhaur's bedstead above their head, carrying it away across the rugged pinkish wilderness pocked with tufts and ornamented with rocks surmounted by plants with yellow-bordered leaves.
Unawakened by the alarm bells hanging from the demon's horns, the jingle bells on their wrists and shins and around their neck, the prince clutched his blankie, blue like the sea, or like the tiny flowers beneath the demon's legs. He wasn't bothered. He turned over in his sleep.
The Tale of Amīr Hamza (Qissa-i Amīr Hamza or Hamza-nāma) and his sidekicks including the trickster ‘Amar ‘Ayyār, the archer Muqbil, and princes such as Landhaur, was told by storytellers from the Safavid to the Mughal domains (Khan, 23-24). The Mughal Emperor Akbar had a sumptuous illustrated text produced around the 1560s CE, whose folios are now scattered across the world, like this one in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Arts (MAK B.I. 8770/19), which was painted by Dasavanta, the floral patterns and other flourishes added by Shravana (Seyller 94-95).
Other illustrations from the imperial Hamza-nāma are matched with pages of writing. But, as Zahra Faridany-Akhavan's 1989 dissertation pointed out, this image in the collection of the MAK is a recto (VIENNA 5r) that is backed by nothing but plain brown paper, possibly indicating the end of a volume (Faridany-Akhavan 53). Glück, Faridany-Akhavan, and Seyller all seem to be unaware, therefore, of the story of Landhaur and the demon, which does not appear in the published Persian Hamza-nāma.
Some variation of it appears, however, in the relatively short Urdu versions that were produced by the storyteller Khalīl ‘Alī Khān Ashk, and then by Ghālib Lakhnawī.
In the midst of a great war that Landhaur was fighting on behalf of Amīr Hamzah, a storm blew, and an enormous claw descended from the heavens and carried the King of Hind into the Land of Qāf. It was the parī Princess Rāshida Parī, who sought Landhaur's aid against White Demon, who was besotted with her, and who had kidnapped her father Rāshid Jinn when she rejected his suit. She also thought Landhaur was cute. Landhaur rescued Rāshid, imprisoned White Demon in a cave, and married Rāshida. But the wily Pillowhead Demon saw their chance one day while Landhaur was asleep beneath a tree's shade. Picking up the Prince they cast him into the cave and freed White Demon (Ghālib Lakhnawī 583-584).
It is possible that in the Persian version with which Akbar was familiar, the White Demon themself was the jailor of the slumberous King of Hind. Note that this image is very similar to the many depictions of the Shāhnāmah hero Rustam being carried by his foe the Akvān Demon to be cast into the sea (Firdausī 299-302).
Works Cited:
Ashk, Khalīl ‘Alī Khān. Dāstān-i Amīr Hamzah. 4 vols. [Originally published 1801]. Bombay: Matba‘-i Haidarī, 1863.
Faridany-Akhavan, Zahra. ‘The Problems of the Mughal Manuscript of the Hamza-Nama: 1562-1577: A Reconstruction’. PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989.
Firdausī, Abū'l-Qāsim. The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. Translated by Dick Davis. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
Ghālib Lakhnawī, Mirzā Amān Allāh, and ‘Abdullāh Husain Bilgrāmī. The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction. [Original published 1855]. Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. 1st ed. New York: Modern Library, 2007.
Khan, Pasha M. The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019.
Seyller, John William, and W. M Thackston. The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 2002.