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 slumberous king of Hind"
Pasha M. Khan selects a folio from
Hamza-nama
"The dream of Zulaykha"
Nicolas Roth selects a Mughal folio
from the Amber Album
(TW: Sexual assault)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
A king suspects his wife, a Rumi (Byzantine) princess. of being unfaithful, not knowing that her supposed young lover is actually her son from a previous marriage. She has been too modest to tell her husband the truth about her relationship. An old woman who is an interpreter of dreams steps in to help sort out this misunderstanding. According to her plan, the queen must feign sleep; the king, believing that she is in deep slumber, must place on her chest a Syriac Solomonic talisman with jinni writing, which will make her confess the truth. When the king hears his wife reveal the actual circumstances and thus prove her marital fidelity, he is overjoyed, and the couple are reconciled. Thankfully, the young man whom the king had ordered to be beheaded was saved by his clever vizier, providing a truly happy ending to the story.
The key takeaway from this story is that truthful communication is inhibited by being in a wakeful state, whereas somnolence facilitates a favourable state for it to come about.
This is the fiftieth story out of fifty-two from the Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot), which is a free “translation” of the Sanskrit Sukasaptati since little apart from the frame tale is the same, including the number of tales. The stories are told by a wise parrot to keep Khujasta, wife of the merchant Maimun, at home when she is tempted to commit adultery while her husband is away on business.
This Perso-Islamic version of the work by Ziauddin Nakhshabi, one of two from the fourteenth century, is replete with ethical and moral lessons. Nakhshabi’s work was popular in the Mughal period and a sumptuous manuscript copy with over two hundred illustrations was produced early on in Akbar’s workshops. Most of the folios of this Mughal manuscript are in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the paintings have been studied by Pramod Chandra, Sherman Lee and John Seyller, while a translation of the text was published by Muhammed A. Simsar.
Many paintings from this manuscript have intricate floral and botanical imagery. This scene, however, is set indoors. The queen’s bed is placed on a hexagonal brick platform with two steps. Over it there is an elaborate canopy with four posts along with a floral border and gold crenellations. She rests with one hand behind her head in a serene napping pose.
In the following plates, Nicolas Roth selects a different illustration from the Tuti-nama that apparently references the rose and depicts jasmine vines. Photographs of those flowers are from his garden (Spring 2023).
A king suspects his wife, a Rumi (Byzantine) princess. of being unfaithful, not knowing that her supposed young lover is actually her son from a previous marriage. She has been too modest to tell her husband the truth about her relationship. An old woman who is an interpreter of dreams steps in to help sort out this misunderstanding. According to her plan, the queen must feign sleep; the king, believing that she is in deep slumber, must place on her chest a Syriac Solomonic talisman with jinni writing, which will make her confess the truth. When the king hears his wife reveal the actual circumstances and thus prove her marital fidelity, he is overjoyed, and the couple are reconciled. Thankfully, the young man whom the king had ordered to be beheaded was saved by his clever vizier, providing a truly happy ending to the story.
The key takeaway from this story is that truthful communication is inhibited by being in a wakeful state, whereas somnolence facilitates a favourable state for it to come about.
This is the fiftieth story out of fifty-two from the Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot), which is a free “translation” of the Sanskrit Sukasaptati since little apart from the frame tale is the same, including the number of tales. The stories are told by a wise parrot to keep Khujasta, wife of the merchant Maimun, at home when she is tempted to commit adultery while her husband is away on business.
This Perso-Islamic version of the work by Ziauddin Nakhshabi, one of two from the fourteenth century, is replete with ethical and moral lessons. Nakhshabi’s work was popular in the Mughal period and a sumptuous manuscript copy with over two hundred illustrations was produced early on in Akbar’s workshops. Most of the folios of this Mughal manuscript are in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the paintings have been studied by Pramod Chandra, Sherman Lee and John Seyller, while a translation of the text was published by Muhammed A. Simsar.
Many paintings from this manuscript have intricate floral and botanical imagery. This scene, however, is set indoors. The queen’s bed is placed on a hexagonal brick platform with two steps. Over it there is an elaborate canopy with four posts along with a floral border and gold crenellations. She rests with one hand behind her head in a serene napping pose.
In the following plates, Nicolas Roth selects a different illustration from the Tuti-nama that apparently references the rose and depicts jasmine vines. Photographs of those flowers are from his garden (Spring 2023).
A king suspects his wife, a Rumi (Byzantine) princess. of being unfaithful, not knowing that her supposed young lover is actually her son from a previous marriage. She has been too modest to tell her husband the truth about her relationship. An old woman who is an interpreter of dreams steps in to help sort out this misunderstanding. According to her plan, the queen must feign sleep; the king, believing that she is in deep slumber, must place on her chest a Syriac Solomonic talisman with jinni writing, which will make her confess the truth. When the king hears his wife reveal the actual circumstances and thus prove her marital fidelity, he is overjoyed, and the couple are reconciled. Thankfully, the young man whom the king had ordered to be beheaded was saved by his clever vizier, providing a truly happy ending to the story.
The key takeaway from this story is that truthful communication is inhibited by being in a wakeful state, whereas somnolence facilitates a favourable state for it to come about.
This is the fiftieth story out of fifty-two from the Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot), which is a free “translation” of the Sanskrit Sukasaptati since little apart from the frame tale is the same, including the number of tales. The stories are told by a wise parrot to keep Khujasta, wife of the merchant Maimun, at home when she is tempted to commit adultery while her husband is away on business.
This Perso-Islamic version of the work by Ziauddin Nakhshabi, one of two from the fourteenth century, is replete with ethical and moral lessons. Nakhshabi’s work was popular in the Mughal period and a sumptuous manuscript copy with over two hundred illustrations was produced early on in Akbar’s workshops. Most of the folios of this Mughal manuscript are in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the paintings have been studied by Pramod Chandra, Sherman Lee and John Seyller, while a translation of the text was published by Muhammed A. Simsar.
Many paintings from this manuscript have intricate floral and botanical imagery. This scene, however, is set indoors. The queen’s bed is placed on a hexagonal brick platform with two steps. Over it there is an elaborate canopy with four posts along with a floral border and gold crenellations. She rests with one hand behind her head in a serene napping pose.
In the following plates, Nicolas Roth selects a different illustration from the Tuti-nama that apparently references the rose and depicts jasmine vines. Photographs of those flowers are from his garden (Spring 2023).
"The king places the talisman on his sleeping wife"
Sunil Sharma selects a Mughal folio
from the Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot)
Play Time in Mughal India
Curator's note: I have an unwavering love for optimism, retro sci-fi, and for my colleague Nicolas Roth’s Massachusetts-based gardening practice that merges his expertise in Mughal era horticulture with a contemporary understanding of plants, flowers and perfumery. As I have pulled so much from his various published texts and metaphorically “plucked his flowers”, I made him a unique edition Nic in the Bagh Playset in return. This 17 piece set of hand painted pop-ups also comes with synesthesia elements such as the perfumes Outer Space, Banana Leaf, Castoreum & Grapes, and Champaca. And a special tea titled “Emperor Jahangir’s vacations in Kashmir, c.1600”.
Here, in this playset, we have some fun. For instance, I have reproduced specific banana trees so prominently painted in 17th and 18th century Rajput paintings and mixed them up with paintings of the same trees currently growing in his garden. Now he has to guess which is which!
The pop-ups of the two rose bushes: are they from his garden or are they from the 18th century Udaipur painting in our exhibition? And what about the glorious clusters of narcissi and iris?
There’s also chaos and danger. As an ever present symbol of mischief, I painted a cute little bunny — but is that bunny a real menace eating up all his flowers and beans or is that a bunny visiting from one 19th century Udaipur painting?
Then there are the turkeys. Are they the ones that visit his garden regularly or are they Emperor Jahangir’s prized pets exploring the present timeline?
Is that a space ship from 1960s Star Trek emerging from a cobalt blue cumulus circa 1650? Or is that me scanning and beaming up all of Nicolas’ plants?
September 2023
