gouache with silver and gold on paper, each depicting a Hindu deity, inscribed on the back in devanagari, framed, 40 x 26cm (image); 42.5 x 29.5cm (folio)

Provenance: Private collection, London. Acquired Christie's Paris, 13 June 2013, lot 283. Previously in a French Private Collection since 1982.

Inscriptions:

Painting 1: verses extracted from the third chapter of the anonymous Śaktisaṅgamatantra, a later Tantra composed between the last part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. The passage is contains a depiction of the form of the Goddess which the Tantric practitioner ought to visualize during meditation. In the painting, she is embracing her consort Śiva, and the text describes the Goddess as naked, wearing a garland of skulls (here shown as human heads), her fangs are frightful, her hair dishevelled, her eyes reddish, her tongue flaming; she holds a sacrificial sword, a bowl made from a skull, etc. At the end, the scribe indicates as source of the verses the Śaktisaṅgamatantra (iti śaktisaṃgame).

Painting 2: four anonymous stanzas in honour of Śiva, collected in the form of a hymn. Traditionally, these stanzas are collectively titled Śivamānasapūjā and are attributed to Śaṅkarācārya. The hymn describes a ritual (pūjā) performed in the mind (mānasa) of the devotee to worship Śiva with a five-fold offering of rice porridge (pāyasa) prepared with fresh milk (payas), milk curd (dadhi), and ghee (ghṛta), a shiny plantain fruit (rambhāphala), various types of boiled rice (śālyanna), camphor (karpūra), and a betel leaf (tāmbūla), offered in a golden bowl adorned with the nine precious jewels. These stanzas are collected also in the Nīlakaṇṭhaṣaṭkarmaprayoga, a ritual text dedicated to lord Nīlakantha (i.e. Śiva), as well as the Bodhāyanaprayoga attributed to the sage Bodhāyana, another ritual text describing the procedure for performing the pūrvaprayoga and the aparaprayoga, the domestic rituals performed by a householder by offering oblations into the holy fire.

Painting 3: verses extracted from the third chapter of the anonymous Śaktisaṅgamatantra. At the end, the scribe indicates as source of the verses the Śaktisaṅgamatantra (iti śaktisaṃgame). The passage contains a depiction of the form of the Goddess which the Tantric practitioner ought to visualize during meditation. The description in the text corresponds to the painting: she is blue, has four arms and three eyes; she dwells on top of a pile of severed heads, naked with firm raised breasts and a gaping mouth; her hair is disheveled, she is adorned with a garland of severed heads, in one of her left hands she holds a sacrificial sword and in the other a severed head, one of her right hands holds a bowl made from a skull and the other has a raised forefinger, her resting places are cemeteries and she is accompanied by demons.

Painting 4: verses describing the form of the Goddess, of Śiva, and of the mystical diagram (yantra) in the painting, which the Tantric practitioner ought to visualize during meditation. The section for each form is introduced by a heading: the first section (atha dakṣiṇakālīdhyānaṃ) describes in which form the Goddess is to be visualized. All or some of these verses occur – often with several variant readings – in numerous Tantras. The second section (atha mahākāladhyānaṃ) focuses on Śiva, whom the practitioner ought to visualize as Mahākāla, time as the Destroyer. The source of these verses is the Puraścaryārṇava, a lengthy compendium composed in the 18^th century by the Nepalese ruler Pratāpa Siṃha Śāha of the Gorkhali dynasty (Pratap Singh Shah, 1751–1777) (Goudriaan and Gupta 1981, 157). The third section (atha yantradhyānaṃ) describes the form of the diagram to be visualized by means of verses again taken from Navamīsiṃha’s Tantracintāmaṇi; the instructions could be used also to draw the diagram, at least partially.

Painting 5: verses describing the form of the Goddess which the Tantric practitioner ought to visualize during meditation. As already introduced in the heading (atha kāmakalākālīdhyānaṃ), this form is Kāmakalā Kālī, one of the nine manifestations of Kālī. As in the case of the previous painting, the source of these verses is the Puraścaryārṇava, from which a rather long passage is quoted. However, the original source might originate from older Tantras, such as the Kālīkulārṇavatantra. This form of Kālī is a manifestation of Śiva’s consort worshipped as a jackal (śivā) “by means of a ritual offering of a tribute of food at a crossroads, on a cremation ground or in a dense wood; this should preferably be done at midnight on the fourteenth (and darkest) night of the dark half of the month” (Goudriaan and Gupta 1981, 79); in the painting, the Goddess holds a young jackal (śivāpota in the verses) with two of her hands.

(We are indebted to Camillo Formigatti for interpreting the texts on the back of these paintings. A fuller version of his analysis is available on request; see also Goudriaan & Gupta 1981).