"Dakshinia Gurjari Ragini: A Lady with a Vina Reclining in the Forest, Waiting for Her Lover." Folio from the dispersed "Berlin" Ragamala (Garland of Melodies)

In this picture Dakshina Gurjari Ragini, one of the principal modes or melodies of Indian
classical music, is personified as a lady in the forest holding a vina, the stringed Indian musical
instrument with a double gourd for a sounding box. (1) The lady reclines on a carpet of lotus
leaves between two pairs of trees. Charged with sexual energy and unable to relax, she is
waiting for her absent lover. While reclining on the lotus bed, she gazes at a large, dark bird
nestling in one of the trees. (The bird is symbolic of her absent lover.) Pairs of reunited birds
(symbolic of the reunited human lovers) fly overhead.
Ragamala (Garland of Melodies) theory is an essential component of Indian high culture.
But it is a complicated subject. It’s “further complicated by disagreements among the scholars
and contemporary practitioners of the arts.” (2) In a ragamala series the 36 or more principal
melodies of Indian classical music were classified and given a name. Each melody or note
cluster was based upon a progression of 5 to 7 notes, and each was associated with a particular
musical scale. (These scales were very different from Western musical scales.) Grouped in six
“families” of melodies, written in ascending or descending order, each “family” was headed by a
male raga and included five or six ragini wives, resulting in a group of 36 or 42 principal
melodies. In the classification of ragas used in the Punjab Hills, each family in addition to the
ragas and raginis also included 8 ragaputras (sons of raga), resulting in a group of 84 principal
melodies. (See cat. no. __.) Over time each raga or ragini also became the subject of an
extended musical improvisation which was performed within strictly defined parameters, and
each raga or ragini was also associated with a particular season or time of day. Thus, a given
raga or ragini could only be performed during a specified time and during a specified season.
Furthermore, each raga or ragini was matched to a poem with a concrete subject written on the
border or on the reverse, and illustrated with a picture that depicted its subject in great detail.
The poem and picture were meant to evoke the mood and emotion of the raga or ragini with
which they were associated. Whether or not one could actually hear a different mood with
every ragamala theme is an open question.
From the late sixteenth century through the early nineteenth century, ragamala series
organized along these complicated lines were made for the princes of India, the major patrons
of Indian classical music, or for anyone else with sufficient wealth or cultural aspirations to afford
a series of his own. In turning the illustrated folios of a ragamala series (numbering 36 folios or
up to 84 folios, depending on the classification system used), the viewer could read the poem,
look at the picture, and hear the music in his head. (And many of the elite Indian patrons, or
aspiring members of the Indian elite, actually did these things.) Therefore, ragamala series
became extremely popular. Together with portraits, depictions of the principal Hindu religious
texts or depictions of Muslim literary tales and dynastic histories, ragamala illustrations became
one of the preferred subjects of Indian painting. (For a discussion of the impact of ragamala
theory on Indian painting, see the introductory essay by Terence McInerney.)
This picture and the following two (cat. nos. 8­9) are from a well­known dispersed
ragamala series called the ‘Berlin Ragamala’ Series because four paintings from the Series are
in the Museum für Indische Kunst, Berlin. (3) One of the paintings in Berlin is dated samvat
1662, or 1605­06 A.D. (4)

(2) See Klaus Ebeling, Ragamala Painting (Basel: Ravi Kumar, 1973). pg. 254, figs.
234­35 .
(3) Ernst Waldschmidt and Rose Leonore Waldschmidt, Miniatures of Musical
Inspiration (Berlin: Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1975). pp. 427­31
(4) Ibid, pg. 427
(1) Catherine Glynn, Robert Skelton, and Anna Dallapiccola 2011, pg. 13

Inscription: Inscribed on the front in black ink with two lines in Sanskrit written in devanagari script: “Dakshina Gujjari is a lady of dark complexion, with beautiful locks, who has gone
to a couch of soft, sprouting shoots of sandal trees, who is bringing about the [right] division of the interval of the notes from her lute”; also inscribed on the front in black ink with a short note in Hindi written in devanagari script: “Dakshina Guj[ja]ri 26”; as well as various doodles. Likewise inscribed on the reverse with the numbers “503 / 2B” and the Indic number “13”

Christie's May 28, 1978

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.

Martin Lerner. The Flame and the Lotus: Indian and Southeast Asian Art from the Kronos Collections. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, pp. 152–53, cat. no. 59a.