Here Raja Sidh Sen, a devout and powerful ruler credited with tantric powers, pays homage to Savari Durga, a regional form of the goddess. Identifiable by her bow and peacock-feathered skirt, she gazes at her subject with bloodshot eyes and blows a horn, confronting him. A terrifying presence, she holds the fresh top of a head, which still bears the red tilaka stripes that indicate it is from one of her devotees, while crows fly above her and the jackals at her feet hint at charnel grounds. The Mandi Master’s bold works are immediately recognizable because of their saturated colors, created from roughly ground pigments, and their distinct style, which makes no attempt to present a realistic likeness of the ruler, but rather conveys his devotional passion.
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Title:Raja Sidh Sen’s Vision of Savari Durga
Artist:Attributed to The Mandi Master (active 1st half of the 18th century)
Date:ca. 1720
Culture:India, Punjab Hills, court of Mandi
Medium:Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 12 1/16 in. (30.6 cm) W. 8 5/16 in. (21.1 cm) Painting: H. 11 1/8 in. (28.3 cm) W. 7 3/8 in. (18.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections
Savari Durga is the form of the Great Goddess worshipped by the Savaris, a rustic community of tribals living in the Punjab Hills. (1) In this painting Savari Durga stands beneath a skinny tree capped with yellow blossoms. She has dark purple skin and four arms, holding a bow, a freshly severed skullcup, an arrow, and a ram’s horn raised to her mouth as if to announce the arrival of Raja Sidh Sen and his party. Savari Durga wears a peacock feather skirt and a three part gold crown secured by a white scarf. She is adorned with a necklace of severed human heads and a belt of severed human hands. This horrific, esoteric goddess is accompanied by a jackal and two small dogs, habitual denizens of Durga’s cremation grounds. In the upper right corner of the picture, four, multicolored carrion birds take flight beneath a narrow strip of azure sky. Savari Durga faces Raja Sidh Sen of Mandi (r. 16841727), one of the most distinctive and original kings in the entire lineage of rulers from the Punjab Hills. As a result of the Raja’s religious devotions, he is said to be have been able to levitate, and reportedly flew from Mandi to the source of the Ganges to perform his daily ablutions. (2) In this picture the tall, physically colossal Raja, wearing wooden ritual sandals, stands before Savari Durga in respectful homage, with his two hands clasped on his chest in devotion. He is accompanied by a shorter female attendant holding a peacock feather morchal, an emblem of royalty, and a bow and arrow. Both the Raja and his attendant display on their foreheads painted, horizontal marks honoring the great god Shiva, the consort of Savari Durga. Sidh Sen’s adherence to esoteric ritual practices and his belief that he communicated with Shiva and the other gods almost as a daily event provided the basis for a fairly large number of paintings in which the Raja appears as a central character in the company of the gods. (3) Whether he worshipped Savari Durga for religious or practical reasons is perhaps unanswerable. (1) I am indebted to Pratapaditya Pal and Edward Wilkinson for their assistance in preparing this entry. (2) John Seyller and Jagdish Mittal, Pahari Paintings in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art (Hyderabad: Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, 2014), pg. 91. (3) For a closely related painting of Sidh Sen with Shiva and a female goddess, see ibid, no. 30.
Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse in black ink with the Indic number “58”(?) and a short note in black ink in Panjabi written in takri script: “Sri Raja Sidh Sen”
Wilkenson.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Seeing the Divine: Pahari Painting of North India," December 22, 2018–July 28, 2019.
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