Jangarh Singh Shyam (1962-2001)
Akhilesh
(Translated from Hindi by Aurogeeta Das)
W
hen the initial disbelief upon receiving the fax from Japan relaying Jangarh’s death, started fading, the act of looking at his art gained fresh momentum; his works began to offer us a new perspective. In these works, Jangarh’s physical being was conspicuous by its absence. Yet, his spirit was palpable by its presence. Indeed, it is because of this profound presence I sensed in his paintings that my attention was drawn to Jangarh’s death. This death was not corporal. This was Jangarh’s death as an artist, which was not conveyed by fax but rather, by his works. As we dealt with the uncertainty over his death, I saw Jangarh’s paintings several times over and photographed them. We organised a small exhibition of his works and were constantly reminded that he was no longer alive. I was especially drawn to his earliest works and considered them alongside several new paintings, some of which were incomplete. These unfinished pictures were works Jangarh had left behind, intending to complete them upon his return from Japan.
In his early works, the power and genius of an artist are clearly visible. The simplicity and narrative strength of those pictures as well as Jangarh’s determination were equally evident. Now that Jangarh was no more, using the term “his last works” seemed appropriate because it was as though his last works intimated his end. When one thought of the twenty-year old youth and the forty-year old man, the fatigue of a long journey was clearly visible in his latter works. In the interim years, Jangarh had travelled from his forests’ primitiveness to the wilderness of the city. I do not ascribe hierarchic values to primitiveness and wilderness. Neither should readers regard this in terms of pure or impure. To comprehend his gradual death, we need to, first and foremost, visit Jangarh’s village, where Verrier Elwin once lived, whose wife was a relative of Jangarh’s and whose son travelled from Jabalpur to take part in Jangarh’s funeral procession.
Jangarh was a Pardhān. Pardhāns are an offshoot of the Gonds, the younger brothers of the Gonds. They have the right to take funeral offerings from the Gonds. Because they are those who accept offerings, they are sometimes referred to as Negis or Dasaundhis. Originally, the Pardhān belongs to a caste of minstrel priests. They sing Gondwānī, Pandwānī and Ramāyanī; in the Gond households, they receive offerings and, as such, they are respected. According to Sheikh Gulab, the creation-myth of the Pardhān-Gond goes something like this:
There were seven Gond brothers. They sowed san (jute) in their field. After a few days, the shoots appeared. One day, they saw a handsome rider on a white horse, which galloped in the middle of their field. The horse’s hooves were destroying the young shoots of the jute. They each picked up their sickles and went after the horse-rider to attack him. The youngest brother went to the nearby drain and peed from sheer fright. The other six brothers continued pursuing the horse-rider. The field was very large, at the edge of which was a sājā tree. Seeing the Gond brothers chasing him, the horse-rider went under the saja tree and with his horse, disappeared into the tree. The six Gond brothers saw him vanish. They understood that he was no ordinary horse rider, as they had at first assumed. ‘He is our Badā Dev who, riding a white horse, came out into our field,’ they thought. “He himself appeared before us, in flesh and blood but alas, we who are unfortunate, failed to recognise him. Instead, we even chased him to attack him! Now, he is upset with us. He disappeared into the saja tree. How do we mollify him?” They all consulted with each other. Under the saja tree, they made an earthen platform. They lit the rār (fragrant resin gum), sacrificed a white cock, poured a libation of mahua (home-brewed liquor made by the Gonds), joined hands in prayer, begged and beseeched; they asked for forgiveness for their wrongdoing and for Bada Dev to reappear before them, but Bada Dev remained cross with them, so he did not come out of the saja tree. All six brothers were confounded and wondered what to do. At this point, the youngest brother walked away from the drain and approached his brothers. He enquired what was the matter and when his brothers explained, he at once ascertained the situation. He told his brothers to take courage and assured them of a solution by which Bada Dev may be appeased. “I’ll think of a way to please Bada Dev,” said he. From the forest nearby, he cut off a branch of the khirsārī tree and brought it along with him. From its wood, he fashioned an ektār (single-stringed) instrument; playing it, he started singing. His music echoed in the jungle and his lyrics praised the greatness of Bada Dev. Bada Dev was pleased with the song and emerged out of the trunk of the saja tree. He placed his hand on this youngest brother’s head and said, “Whenever you play this instrument, and sing songs of me, I shall appear. This musical instrument shall henceforth be called the ‘bānā‘.” Bada Dev accepted everyone’s prayer and vanished again into the saja tree. Ever since, the saja tree has been considered a sacred tree among the Gonds, meriting worship.
The six brothers praised their youngest sibling and said, ‘Brother, henceforth, you will not be required to participate in any household chores. You shall play the bana and praise Bada Dev. We will each contribute equally towards your share. Rest assured that half of our total income shall be yours. After our death, you shall have the right to half of our property. Our children will also always follow this custom.’ From then on, the youngest brother began to sing songs, and in the form of offerings, began to receive half of his rightful share from his Gond brothers. (Gulab 1983)
Jangarh was a Pardhān. He was a musician. He spent his childhood in the lanes and bylanes of Pātangarh, playing his flute and singing. The descriptions of gods and goddesses in his songs also began to be sporadically depicted by his brush. For Jangarh, there was no distinction between music and painting. For him, painting was also singing songs. Prior to his arrival in Bhopal, he would not have regarded himself as an ādivāsī. He must have become aware of this difference only after moving to Bhopal: He was a tribal and the rest were urban. After arriving at Bharat Bhavan, the first trip that Jangarh made to Japan was not undertaken by him as a Pardhān adivasi but rather, as an artist; moreover, as an artist who was not a musician. This marked his death as a musician.
During this maiden trip to Japan, Jangarh felt compelled to purchase his first, and perhaps the last musical instrument of his life (adivasis generally fashion their own instruments). In the Saitama city market, Jangarh — this youngest Pardhān brother — insisted on buying a harmonica from a musical instruments shop. In this Pardhān family of musicians, no Pardhān had ever been a visual artist before Jangarh and no Pardhān was ever a musician after Jangarh. Upon returning from Japan, we always found Jangarh playing the harmonica and singing. Perhaps Jangarh wanted to obliterate his existence as a visual artist. But he had given birth to a painting tradition in which there remained no room for music. Innumerable Pardhāns now only know how to make paintings.
In Jangarh’s village Patangarh and in Bhopal city, many of Jangarh’s relatives and family members are painters. Jangarh’s style of painting has become a school, with many artists painting in the ‘Jangarh Kalam’ style (the word ‘kalam’ translates metaphorically to style). These artists include Bhajju Shyam, Ram Singh Urveti, Narmadaprasad Tekam, Anand Singh Shyam, Dilip Shyam, Kala Bai Shyam, Subhash Vyam, Durgabai Vyam, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Raju Shyam, Ramesh Shyam, Shambhu Singh Shyam, Sukhram Prasad and many young painters today who are adherents of this ‘kalam’.
Jangarh’s individuality, in effect, turned into a community expression. Swaminathan questioned this phenomenon thus:
The Adivasi genius of Jangarh moves with ease in the broader range of colours made available and they are made to subserve his singular vision. It may be argued that what Jangarh does is not general practice among the Pardhān and Gond and that he is an exception. There is no doubt that he is an exception and herein lies our point: he is giving pictorial form to many of the Pardhān Gond deities which perhaps do not have sanction in traditional practice. His renderings are not iconic images taken and repeated from communal usage. As his works are not based upon any formulated design sanctified by repetition, can they truly be called . . . expressions of Gond or Pardhān art. (Swaminathan 1987: 48)
In reality, was Jangarh still a Pardhān? His music and song had as good as died. The subject matter of his paintings had moved far away from Gond deities. His paintings had essentially begun to be regarded as an elaboration of Jangarh’s own talent. Many who met him were not even aware of his roots as a musician. Possibly, Jangarh himself no longer felt that his Pardhān identity was important. That Jangarh was a Pardhān was a fact that had begun to gradually disappear from his paintings. As a Pardhān, he was dying a slow death. In the environment of an unknown city, he was instead emerging as an adivasi, but we would soon observe that he would also begin to lose his ‘tribal-ness’.
When looking at Jangarh’s works, one is reminded of Holland’s celebrated artist Van Gogh. There exist numerous parallels between these two artists. Both artists departed from established norms of painting. Neither artist depicted conventional subjects of paintings. Both extensively used vibrant colours. Both were introverts. Both were victims of depression. The creative output of both painters spanned no more than 20 years. Both ended their lives by their own hands.
In reality, Jangarh’s paintings were not communitarian expressions. They were an individual artist’s expression, which only touched upon a collective consciousness. As an artist, his portrayals were not limited to the Gond gods and goddesses who were sung about in Pardhān minstrelsy; they also demonstrated an abiding relationship to flora and fauna — the plants, trees, animals and birds of the forest. On the one hand, Jangarh was giving visual form to ‘Budhā Dev’, ‘Maswāsī Dev’, ‘Bābā Dev’, ‘Phulwāri Devī’, ‘Khairgādīyā Devī’, ‘Hanumān’, ‘Medho kī Māi’, ‘Mehrālīn Devī’, etc. These are not portraits that can be found in so-called popular style; these forms were appearing in portrait form for the very first time, via Jangarh, who in essence was bringing them into the world. Prior to this, these gods and goddesses only resided in the songs sung by the Pardhān. So, these images had no tradition. It was Jangarh’s kalam (brush) that breathed life into these deities. It is evident that no tradition of such paintings, or indeed any painting, existed in the Pardhān or Gond psyche. Jangarh was unconsciously giving birth to a tradition. On the other hand, chachān birds, sanparkhi sarp (winged serpent), the chirputī plant, the kathelī tree, the bull, Bhīm, the fox, the ghughuā (owl-like bird), deer and many such creatures were being given form by Jangarh, created from the world of his imagination; these were essentially Jangarh’s conduit to the real world. The boy who grew up in Mandla’s dense jungles, through his colours, slowly unfurled his relationship with the world of vegetation and the animal world. In the 20 years during which Jangarh was active as an artist, he turned his brush to these subjects over and over again. And yet, each time, Jangarh’s paintings of the chachān bird took flight in a different direction. In these symbolic paintings by Jangarh, his talent is shone through.
Jangarh’s early paintings only depicted Gond gods and goddesses. Most often, these paintings reflected a Gond youth’s obsession with the descriptions of the deities, as found in his community’s songs. The mystical force of these gods and goddesses moved him; the fact that they remained invisible yet powerful filled him with astonishment. It is in these brief, wonder-laden moments that he calls out to them. And gradually, he brings them onto his paper and forges a physical relationship with them. Removing them from a world of words that is filled with wonder, he drowns them in a mystique of colours. Emerging from his curious darkness, Maswasi Dev inches towards the sun’s rainbow.
The fisherfolk sing songs about Maswasi Dev. It is believed that Maswasi Dev fills the fishermen’s nets with fish. Here, not only does Jangarh free Maswasi Dev from the realm of song but also infuses him with fresh meaning. Jangarh’s Maswasi Dev sports a bow on his shoulder and holds a bird in the same hand; in the other hand is a two-headed arrow. Liberated from the traditional fish-catching net, Maswasi Dev appears for the first time in this form. Another small example is that of Rāt Māi. Jangarh himself describes Rāt Māi Murkhudī thus:
She is the goddess of grain and lives in the chulhā (stove). It is the responsibility of Rat Mai to arrange for food for the guests and residents of the home. Rat Mai Murkhudi protects sleeping Gonds during the night.
In Jangarh’s paintings, she keeps her eyes wide open to make sure that there is no shortage of food in the house. Her face remains alert and careful. And at the same time, in the womb of Rat Mai Murkhudi, ‘Rat Mai’ is fast asleep. Her alertness and her slumber are simultaneously depicted in the same painting. If one were to use Philip Rawson’s words, Jangarh’s paintings “are actually a meeting ground of both belief and disbelief” (Rawson 1967).
In his later works, flora and fauna replaced the Gond deities. For example, the chirputi plant; in this painting, the plant is not complete; it has one branch that has a coiled serpent in the place of its twig. On the adjoining branch, there is a nest of the bayā (weaver bird). There is the baya and also another bird, which is perched on a higher branch; the snake is shown moving towards this other bird, which is perched at the tail end of the upper branch. Flowers are depicted as buds and leaves are blooming like flowers. The whole plant appears as if in bloom. Happiness pervades the whole painting. Jangarh has not painted the entire plant; he has painted a single branch, which — moreover — grows beyond the frame of the paper. By tracing a sort of incompleteness, this painting offers an intimate insight — in Swaminathan’s words, ‘a parallel reality’.
Initially, the outpouring of Jangarh’s talent was seen only in his sculptures. After his move to Bhopal, this creative outburst affected artists from other castes. Several artists like Belgur, Bhuri Bai, Shankar and Lado Bai and many others who came into contact with Jangarh, tried to imitate him but they never succeeded. This was partly due to Jangarh. Jangarh was aware of his distinctive style and he always opposed those who copied him. He used to urge them to develop their own styles. Yet, what these other tribal painters saw was a successful painter who similarly hailed from the jungle, was an adivasi like them and who, not unlike them, expressed himself using brushes and colours. Why then, they asked themselves, did they not deserve such fortune and fame as Jangarh acquired in his earliest years as an artist? Jangarh was oblivious to these feelings; he was busy discovering himself in the new media that he found in the city. He was gradually entering the class of celebrated artists all over India, with his growing familiarity with silkscreen printing, lithography, etching and drawing. Jangarh’s presence brought in a joyfully musical element to his evening get-togethers with a plethora of famed artists. Indeed, Jangarh learnt silkscreen, lithography and etching alongside these very painters. Simultaneously, he started drawing with a Rotring pen, to initially depict the gods and goddesses, and later to portray other subjects as well. In fact, the first images in each new medium began with the depiction of gods and goddesses. In that sense, we may say that Jangarh was invoking deities into each new medium.
Let us now resume the story of the Pardhāns’ origin:
How is it that the youngest brother came to be called a Pardhān despite being a Gond? This also has a story. There lived a Gond couple in Barhagarh with six sons who were farmers. Their field lay at the foot of the Chokar-Dongri hillock. The paddy harvest was almost ripe in the field. The father, to protect their harvest from wild animals, had placed scarecrows at several places in the field and he himself, along with his wife, stood guard atop a machān (temporary platform) in the middle of the field. His wife was pregnant. Her pregnancy was far advanced but she continued to frequent the field with her husband. When the paddy was ready, she accompanied her husband and sons to cut the paddy. One day, as she cut the paddy, she experienced her labour pains. Soon, she delivered a baby boy at the pār (edge) of the field. This was her seventh son. She put him to sleep there, and resumed work. She would go to the field every day, put her son to sleep and start working. In this manner, she cut all the paddy in their field. Now, they all lived happily in their home. The youngest also began to grow and play with his brothers. But when he turned adolescent, his six brothers kept him apart. They told their parents, ‘The six of us were born in the house, so we six are like one. We have a right to this house. Our seventh brother was born in the field, at the edge, and therefore he is separate. Since he was born on the side of the dhān (paddy) field, he shall be known as Par-Dhān, not a Gond.’ Since then, the seventh brother of the Gonds came to be called a Pardhān. And from that time on, the Gonds also stopped taking food or drink from the Pardhān. He was served his food outside the house. This seventh brother was a singer. He made a one-stringed bana, and played it while he sang day and night. Listening to his songs, even the flora and fauna became enthralled. One day, the Gonds organised a pujā (worship) of Bada Dev. They made a lot of puja offerings but Bada Dev was not pleased. He did not accept their offerings. At that very moment, the Pardhān arrived there playing his instrument and singing a song in accompaniment. Bada Dev was pleased with his song and music. He accepted the puja offerings and spoke from inside the saja tree, ‘Listen, this Pardhān is your youngest brother. He has a right to half of your income. Until you give him his due, I will not accept you as one of mine.’ Since then, the Gonds have given the Pardhān half of their income as an offering. He received offerings like joy offerings, grain offerings, wedding offerings, the witch doctor’s fees, a pensioner’s income and offerings of cattle. (Gulab 1983)
But this young brother stopped accepting offerings. He earned for himself. Jangarh was a successful painter. He took long leaves from his job at Bharat Bhavan. He became increasingly busy. He often went to Delhi, Bangalore and Bombay on commissioned work. He was especially invited from India to the ‘Hundred Magicians of the World’ exhibition in Paris. On this trip, he found a global audience for his art. This Pardhān was leaving his traditional occupation behind, and beginning a new tradition. Jangarh never noticed at which point he took on the responsibility of his elder brothers and their families, as well as the care of his own family. They needed much time and money and in his effort to cater to their expanding needs, Jangarh forced himself to take on more and more commissions. International recognition for his paintings, his family responsibilities and the growing demand for his works propelled Jangarh to paint prolifically. To lighten the task of churning out paintings by the dozen, Jangarh started training his family members to assist him by mixing colours and preparing canvasses. Later, he got them to paint the backgrounds, fill in the outlines of forms and soon, Jangarh realised that he only had to put in the finishing touches. Most of his time was now being spent in traveling, worship, and treatment for his back pain. Jangarh, in his paintings, was clearly moving away from the painter that he was as a teenager, when he had created a yellow-hued Hanuman on the wall of his house, which had attracted the attention of members of Roopankar’s collection drive.
I would like to refer to another Hanuman here, which Jangarh painted during that period. This picture can initially seem like an average painting; indeed, it does look commonplace and yet, when you look at it closely, you realise that this is no ordinary painting. The form of this Hanuman itself conveys the feeling of flight yet it is in the form of a standing Hanuman. Despite the fact that there is no sky behind, we see a limitless sky. In one hand, Hanuman holds a mountain, in the other a mace. The posture is neither of flight nor of a stationary creature. The plants in pots are in reality branches of a tree. The painting is extremely raw and immature. If on the right, the mace and the leaves of the tree have extended beyond the frame of the paper, then on the left, the mountain has taken the shape of the paper itself. Though the painting appears to have been made by amateur hands, the expression is as accomplished as that of the great musician Mozart. The painting depicts a crown, a necklace and a waistband. The ornamentation is simple and consists of dots. A certain clarity is evident in the choice of colours. He selected only two or three colours, which, furthermore, he used judiciously. It is obvious that the image employs contrasting colours.
The apparently alien subjects that began to be seen in his images were in effect a direct outcome of his environment. A big part of that environment is the gods and goddesses praised in Pardhān songs. Jangarh’s musical moorings were not visible in his later paintings. Similarly, the symbolic aspects of his work dimmed. Next to gods and goddesses, the subjects most common in Jangarh’s pictures are the plants and birds around him. It is evident that Jangarh’s colour compositions were not planned beforehand. Jangarh’s unparalleled skill as a colourist, his use of vibrant, contrasting colours and his unimaginably sophisticated manner of superimposing one set of colours on base hues came to him as naturally as did his shifts from one subject to another. For Jangarh, his Pardhān world was not just deeply personal but also profoundly soulful. Jangarh habitually arrived at Bharat Bhavan early in the mornings and played his flute in the ateliers. By the time the others started trickling in, the notes of Jangarh’s flute would have already filled the studios for three or four hours. For him, the act of playing the flute attached him to his world as if by an umbilical cord. His birth as an artist had already occurred but in this new world, he felt that lack of security, which he used to derive from the luminous and soulful presence of his gods and goddesses.
Whenever he met innumerable, strange foreigners, he became convinced that each of these foreigners must, like him, have their own gods and goddesses; he would wonder aloud, “Sadly, I do not know their gods and goddesses and I cannot even identify them. What sort of acquaintance is this, when I know them but not their deities?” Thereafter, his own Pardhān deities began to disperse among the melodious notes of his flute. He did not lead them back to the world of words, where he had once found them. The heartache of rendering them homeless intensified as time went by. Flora, fauna and avifauna gradually began to displace the Pardhān deities in his paintings. His portrayal of gods and goddesses was now limited only to that initial invocation of each deity. The urban world in which Jangarh found himself had a distinct conception of his gods and goddesses. No doubt this was Jangarh’s reckoning; I can think of no other reason for which Jangarh might have abandoned the deities he had held so dear.
Jangarh was moving further and further away from that mysterious world of Pardhān deities, which had, until then, sustained him. Even those magical songs in which the deities found pride of place began to elude him. That enigmatic world in which he used to encounter each new deity in varied forms had begun to disappear. When he emerged from the new media, the rounds of exhibitions, the many journeys and so-called achievements, to take a breath of fresh air, he found that the songs that praised his deities had turned into chachān birds and flown away. He was no longer privy to that curiously unfathomable world of gods and goddesses. His imagination would now have to be content within the parametres of his new reality, perhaps even a form of realism. On the one hand he faced the increasing demand for his work; on the other hand, he catered to the increasing demands of his family. These were the two banks of a river, the river of Jangarh’s talent, which was now bereft of gods and goddesses. Rat Mai Murkhudi no longer graced his nights with her presence, where once her protection had reassured him while he worked in the dark, until the early hours of the morning. Even Maswasi Dev had abandoned him, so that his fishing nets were no longer swollen with fish. Now, snakes, mongoose, eagles, fish, spiders and birds were the chief inhabitants of the world that had survived. These creatures prowled around the world of his imagination, waiting to ambush or to be ambushed.
Jangarh’s later works demonstrated great craftsmanship; in such paintings, there was not a hint of weakness, carelessness or even rawness. The heightened awareness that made his artistry taut in fact dimmed his once vibrant colours. It is hard to determine whether this excessive consciousness was caused by familial responsibilities or by the attentions of the market. In this wide-awake world, Jangarh was troubled by the absence of Rat Mai Murkhudi. The repetitive decorativeness that became essential to Jangarh’s later paintings combined with the limited subjects that survived, so constrained Jangarh’s imaginative output that he was considerably pained.
Well before his death in Japan, as an artist, Jangarh had already entered into the body of another, as we say in India. Chronic backache and recurring depression caused Jangarh to spend hours in puja (worship). On the other hand, his gods and goddesses had walked away from his paintings. As for meat and drink, “This was the story that made Mahadev himself fear that the Gond will eat everything: The Gond, having eaten, was resting, when God passed by and asked, ‘How come you are so lazy?’ His subject replied, ‘We have no energy, no fire.’ Hearing this, God himself taught the Gond how to make mahua. From that time on, dance, joy, laughter and song came into the world.” (Captain James Forsyth, 1857, quoted by Gulab, 1983). Jangarh stopped both eating and drinking. Dance, joy, laughter and song had vanished from the Pardhān Gond’s life.
Jangarh, smeared with the worshipper’s tilak (head marking), filled with depression, troubled by backache, his body feverish, painted a snake and mongoose instead of painting a Sanparkhi sarp (mythological winged snake). Rather than remaining connected to the mythic aspects of the potentially dangerous Sanparkhi sarp, which once filled Jangarh with awe-inspiring disbelief, he now seemed more aware of the actual viciousness of a fight between mongoose and snake, wherein the snake awaited his death at the mercy of the mongoose. This painting is characterised by overt decorativeness. The brilliant dots that had graced Hanuman’s neck now transferred to the skin of the mongoose. Although he uses several shades of the same colour, the painting remains monotone. It seemed as though the painting’s excessive decorativeness had somehow stilled it. The purity of the paper is maintained at the cost of the purity of Jangarh’s expression. The clarity of the forms interrupts their movement. Ironically, the burden of consciousness confused his natural skill as a colourist, as evidenced in this painting.
Everything is expressed, clear, preserved, beautiful, unambiguous, clean and accessible. Here, firmness of thought, clarity of expression and integrity of approach have been replaced by heightened awareness, smoothness and uniformity.
Jangarh no longer behaved as a Pardhān. The harmonica remained neglected in a corner of his house. The time that he would have spent in song and music he now spent in treatment for his back and the time he would have dedicated to his flute he now allocated to worship. It is in a state of such uncertainty, such turmoil, that Jangarh’s third trip to Japan took place. After his second trip to Japan, when Jangarh landed in Kolkata, lost in his own thoughts, his family went to the airport to receive him. He greeted them absent-mindedly, almost as if he were reluctant. On the long, 40-hour train journey back to Bhopal from Kolkata, he sat, silent, gazing out of the window, his eyes vacant. He had forgotten how to speak. The Pardhān who used to sing was now even afraid to talk. There was a simple reason for his silence: he had not spoken for three months. He spoke no Japanese and he had been in Japan, where no one spoke Hindi.
Jangarh travelled to Japan three times, he even named his daughter Japani. On his first trip, he bought a musical instrument; on his second, he forgot how to speak; from his third, he did not return. Sheikh Gulab continues:
Among the Gonds, both cremation and burial practices take place. Those who die a natural death are cremated. Corpses that result from the plague, epidemics, snakebites and are in general, considered as constituting untimely deaths, are buried. Children are also buried. The corpse is clothed in a new dhoti (lower garment for men) or if a woman’s body, in a white and red saree, placed on a wooden stretcher and covered with a white sheet along white a bowl, tobacco and any personal belongings that were special to the person who died. Four people carry the stretched to the cremation ground. The procession makes a rest stop on the way, where two coins are buried into the ground, covered with a thorny bush and pushed down with a heavy stone. The Gonds believe that if the soul of the dead person attempts to return home, it will follow the same route and in doing so, will get stuck in the thorny bush, preventing its return home. In the cremation ground, a funeral pyre is prepared. After bathing the corpse, it is laid on its stomach onto the funeral pyre. The head of the corpse must point towards the north. Everyone who participates in the funeral procession is expected to place five woods onto the funeral pyre. The eldest son, the brother or other male relative of the person who has died is expected to bathe, and while still in their wet garments, must light the fire. After the funeral pyre gets going strong, the head of the corpse is prodded with a wooden stick until it splits and the brain spills out from the skull. All members of the funeral procession circumambulate around the funeral pyre and take a dip into the nearby water body (lake, river or other). Having bathed, they all return home. The person who has lit the funeral pyre heads the procession, holding up his wet dhoti. On the way, he picks up a stone, spits on it, circles it around his head and passes it on to the next person in the procession. Each person repeats this ritual until the stone is handed over to the last person in the procession. Then, the last person also repeats this ritual but merely throws it over his shoulder. The Gonds believe that this ritual prevents any inauspicious incidents with ghosts or spirits. In the case of the death of a pregnant woman, instead of a stone, mustard seeds are scattered in a similar fashion, so that she does not turn into a witch. After returning home, all those who have attended the funeral wash their feet and sit in the courtyard. One person hands out oil and turmeric, which everyone smears on their feet and hands before returning to their own homes. Only when the males return from the funeral do the women of the house bathe. The widow of the deceased heads the procession of female relatives. When they reach the water body, the widow’s bangles are broken upon the ghats (steps). The widow must bathe first, ahead of the other female relatives. On their way back and upon their return, the females observe exactly the same ritual as the males. The corpse is offered food for three days following the funeral. The head of the family places rice, dal (lentils), milk and curd into bowls made of stitched leaves and carries them to the cremation ground, placing them both under a tree, uttering the name of the deceased. Food is not cooked in the home of the deceased, but rather, brought in from relatives’ or neighbours’ homes during these three days. The person who has lit the funeral pyre is treated as an untouchable during these three days. On the third day, the person who lit the funeral pyre must pick up the bones off the pyre and is not considered as purified until he has done so. After picking up the bones, he is expected to tie them into a potli (bag made by tying a loose piece of cloth) and hang it from the branch of a tree.
Burial rituals are only pointed towards the south. The corpse is laid reclining, rather than flat, into the ground. The sheet covering the body is removed. All those attending the burial throw in five fistfuls of earth. The corpse is covered with earth, then showered with thorns and finally, with stones. All other rituals remain the same as those for a cremation. (Gulab 1983)
This time, Jangarh did not return. Bharat Bhavan received a fax about his death. Then, it received details about his death. Finally, Jangarh’s corpse arrived. Jangarh was not buried in accordance with Pardhān tradition. Jangarh was cremated in Bhopal and his ashes were buried in Patangarh. As we have seen above, according to Gond tradition, untimely deaths are marked by burials that point towards the south. I wonder, could Jangarh’s head be placed towards the south? It seems that even in death, Jangarh had departed from Pardhān tradition.
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References: Gulab, Sheikh, Gond, Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad, Bhopal, 1983 (monograph in Hindi) Rawson, Philip S., "The Numinous Image" in Contra Magazine, No.1, Ed. J. Swaminathan, New Delhi, October 1966 Swaminathan, J., "Karia and the Tiger" in The Perceiving Fingers: Catalogue of the Roopankar Museum, Bharat Bhavan in association with All India Handicrafts Board, Bhopal, 1987, pp. 47-50 Reference for the original article in Hindi: Akhilesh, “Pardhān ki mautein”, Bahuvachan: Sahitya Bhasha Shodh aur Vichar ka Hindi Traimasik, ed. Ashok Vajpeyi, Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, New Delhi, Vol. 3, No. 9, October-December 2001, pp. 104-112 (A quarterly journal in Hindi of Literature, Language, Research and Ideas published by Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University) Translator's note: In consultation with the author, some minor corrections have been made. With the author's full permission and direction, I have also taken the liberty to interpolate where appropriate, to contextualise especially those passages where I felt that clarifications were necessary due to the passage of time since the original publication, which came out only a few months after Jangarh Singh Shyam's demise in July 2001. The author's article in Hindi was intended for an audience familiar with Jangarh's life and works. Consequently, the sense of both immediacy and intimacy that coloured Akhilesh's "Pardhān ki Mautein" has been attenuated as considered suitable for the current publication's readers. In such respects, this translation is therefore not absolutely faithful to Akhilesh's essay in the Hindi but every attempt has been made to closely convey the insights expressed in the author's original writing. The translator wishes to acknowledge Hitesh Kumar's and the author's kind assistance in translating this article.
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Note --All paintings Jangarh Singh Shyam. Barring cover image rest courtesy: https://alfalfastudio.com/2013/05/13/indian-contemporary-art-jangarh-ingh-hyam/ Born in 1956, Akhilesh is an artist, curator and writer. He has gained worldwide recognition and appreciation for his works through extensive participation in numerable exhibitions, shows, camps and other activities. His works have been displayed in a number of shows curated by renowned curators such as Manjit Bawa, Prayag Shukla, Rm. Palanippan, Renu Modi, Gayatri Sinha, Kalpana Shah, and Manish Pushkale, amongst others. In addition, he has also curated a number of shows, including one for the collection of Bharat Bhavan (Bhopal), and for galleries in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and and the Icon Gallery (USA). Akhilesh is the recipient of several awards and felicitations in the field of art, including the Kalidas Academy Certificate Award (1976), Bharat Bhawan Biennial (1990), Government of India Senior Artist Fellowship (1994-1995) and Kala Kaustubh Samman (2006). He lives and works in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Aurogeeta Das trained as a printmaker and completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Westminster, London. Her PhD involved extensive research on Indian floor-drawing and floor-painting traditions, a genre of domestic practices that influenced Jangarh's contemporary traditional art. She regularly lectures on Indian art at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London
“Jangarh Singh Shyam was born in the early 1960s to an impoverished Gond family in rural central India. Discovered and nurtured by the renowned artist J. Swaminathan at Bharat Bhavan, the multi-arts center in Bhopal, Jangarh rose to global prominence after participating in a seminal art exhibition in Paris. After a brief career spanning only 20 years - and by then recognized as one of India's greatest tribal artists - Jangarh committed suicide in 2001 at the age of 39. His work, informed by the Gond deities of his childhood, defied established categories and inspired a contemporary school of indigenous painting, which continues to attract admirers in India and abroad.” --From “Jangarh Singh Shyam: The Enchanted Forest: Paintings And Drawings From The Crites Collection (ROLI BOOKS) Hardcover – September 1, 2018
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