The painting by Ravi Behera, a contemporary artist from Puri known for his fine lines, rare precision, perfectly balancing the spaces – the figures as against the decorative components and breathing spaces, and the choice of palette, rendered in water colours used mostly in basic tints without shading, represents ‘Navagrahas’ – nine planets, manifest and unmanifest cosmic bodies immensely influencing life for good or bad, each by an image traditionally associated with the related ‘graha’. A horizontal length of Tussore silk the canvas space has been divided into nine vertical divisions, each uniformly coloured in pinkish gold and drawn a shrine-like with a shallow corbelled arched apex and all nine raised over a common platform conceived as an assemblage of a number of variously carved mouldings. The painting is contained within double frame, the outer, consisting of floral-vine design, being wider, and the inner, just a moulding-like.
As is the usual order of the ‘grahas’ – planets in Indian astrology : Surya – Sun, Soma – Moon, Mangal – Mars, Budh – Mercury, Brahaspati – Jupiter, Shukra – Venus, Shani – Saturn, Rahu and Ketu, Agni, the ruling deity of Surya, the first in the order of nine planets, enshrines the first seat in the nine-windowed Navagrahas shrine of this cloth painting. The second window is occupied by the figure of Chandra, the handsome youth, the ruling deity of Soma, the third, by the figure of Skanda, the over ruler god of Mars, the fourth, by the figure of Vishnu, the ruling deity of Mercury, the fifth, by the figure of Brahma, the over ruler of Jupiter, the sixth, by the figure of Indra, the over ruler of Venus, the seventh, by the figure of the black-bodied Yama, the eighth, Rahu as Monster’s head – Rahu’s name in the Western astrology, and finally, the ninth, Ketu, partially conceived as the Dragon’s tail, as Ketu is seen in Western astrology, and partially as the figure of Chitragupta, the death god Yama’s keeper of the record of every life’s tenure and day of its termination.
In his visualization of various deity forms the artist has adhered to astrological tradition, not mythical. Not four-faced, Brahma has here just a single face, and Vishnu is normal two-armed, nor four-armed. The body colours of Agni, Chandra, Yama and Monster’s head might be seen as adhering to both traditions, mythological and astrological, but a yellow Vishnu and blue Indra are completely astrological visualizations. Now a globally acknowledged branch of knowledge convictions, beliefs, calculuses and derivations of Indian system of astrology are highly respected world over. In its long tradition Indian astrology has not only conceived the visual manifestation of each planet – its anthropomorphic image, symbolic motif usually an animal form, the deity that commands or over rules it and a huge body of rhetoric but also planet’s elemental composition and its microcosmic form and accordingly the planet-stones that minimize its adverse influences, and enhance the positive. Accordingly, ruby is Sun’s stone, Moonstone, Moon’s, red coral, Mars’, emerald, Mercury’s, yellow sapphire, Jupiter’s, diamond, Venus’s, blue sapphire, Saturn’s, honey coloured hessonite, Rahu’s, and cat’s eye, Ketu’s.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books. .
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