Varaha, The Boar Incarnation of Vishnu, folio from the Tehri Garhwal series of the Gita Govinda

The opening folio of the great Series to which this painting once belonged (see also cat.
nos. 77­85.) featured an image of Ganesha (cat. no. 77), followed by cat. no. 79, and then by a
number of folios depicting the avataras, or earthly incarnations, of the great god Vishnu. (The
lengthy Gita Govinda poem which they illustrate is devoted to the loves of Krishna, the eighth
earthly incarnation of the great god Vishnu.)
In the past Vishnu had appeared on the earth in a variety of forms, each time as a saviour
of mankind or as a destroyer of some evil. These incarnations are known as avataras, or
descents. (1) This painting illustrates Varaha the Boar, Vishnu’s third incarnation. He assumed
this form to combat the evil demon Hiranyaksha, who is depicted in this painting lying on his
back beneath the primal waters, already dead. After the defeat of the evil demon, Varaha lifted
an image of the vernal earth, which in this painting is depicted like a flattened pancake, on his
upraised tusk. Here, he also carries a jewel­encrusted mace, a white conch shell, and a lotus
flower. Only his crowned head and shoulders are visible above the intricate rhythms of the
swirling water. (For other paintings illustrating a non­Krishna incarnation of Vishnu, including
an image of Varaha the Boar, see cat. nos. 19 and 23.)
151 preparatory drawings for the great Series, the ‘second’, or ‘Tehri Garhwal’, Gita
Govinda Series, to
which this fine painting once belonged, are mostly in the collection of the National Museum,
New Delhi, but with a sizable group now also widely scattered in museum and private
collections throughout the world. These sanguine and black ink drawings have the same
dimensions as the folios from the Series under discussion, and the same ratio of the border
area to the painted area. Like the finished works from the Series, these drawings also have
full texts of Gita Govinda verses inscribed on their verso, with a shorter gloss written in the
Pahari dialect of Punjabi as well. (4)
It is now more or less accepted that Nainsukh was the author of these 151 extremely
rudimentary drawings, indicating as a kind of guide or “aide memoire” the general alignment of
the various subjects from a given, or projected, series he wished to highlight. In designing these
works, Nainsukh was greatly influenced by the compositions of an earlier series. In fact that
earlier series was the ‘first’ Gita Govinda Series, executed by Nainsukh’s older brother Manaku
in 1730. (For the artist Manaku, see cat. nos. 66­67, 74.) But Nainsukh wished to update
Manaku’s by­ now rather old­fashioned compositions in his currently lush, naturalistic later style.
As the great man died in 1778, and as the precise nature of his later style is debatable, we do
not know whether Nainsukh ever worked on the present Series, whether its color scheme and
superb finish were his, or whether these paintings were the Nainsukh­inspired products lovingly
executed by close followers. [W.G. Archer even believes the Series was painted by Kushala,
Nainsukh’s nephew, working with Gaudhu, Nainsukh’s son. (2)] Be that as it may, paintings
from the Series are now considered by many to be the most refined works ever made in the
Punjab Hills. (3)
(1) Benjamin Walker, Hindu World (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.,
1983), Vol. II, pg. 575
(2) W.G. Archer 1973, Vol. I, pp. 292­293
(3) Eberhard Fischer and B.N. Goswamy in M.C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B.N.
Goswamy, eds. 2011, Vol. II, pg. 682
(4) For a description of this series of drawings, see ibid, pg. 689

Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse in black ink with five lines of Sanskrit text written in devanagari script (Gita Govinda, part 1, stanza 7; for an English translation, see Miller, ed., 1977, p. 70); also inscribed in black ink with a two-line summary of the Sanskrit text in the Pahari dialect of Panjabi written in devanagari script; also inscribed in black ink with various short
notations written in devanagari script

Swiss Collection

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.