The pandemic has meant obvious restrictions to travel. During a brief relaxation of curbs we managed to go to Bishnupur, the old city of the Malla rulers of Bengal. Bishnupur is perhaps most famous for its terracotta temples, although the city is also home to the intricate Baluchari sari. Bishnupur also has its own distinct classical Indian music tradition or gharana(literally musical house or home), making it a veritable cultural centre. As far as the temple structures go, the most well-known ones include the Jor Bangla temple (c. 1655), Shyam Rai temple (c. 1643), and the Rasmancha (c. 1600). The intricate terracotta panels depict many scenes from Hindu mythology, as well as from contemporary life, including the arrival of the Europeans in Bengal.

The city of Bishnupur is now part of the Bankura District of West Bengal. As its name suggests, the city was dedicated to the Hindu god, Vishnu (Bishnu in Bengali). It was after the Malla king Bir Hambir embraced Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the sixteenth century that the major terracotta temples to the various forms of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, started proliferating, making the city the heritage site that it is today. At this time Bishnupur was part of the Mughal Empire, and historians such as Kumkum Chatterjee have highlighted the blend of Hindu Vaishavism and Mughal influences that the city exhibits. For Chatterjee, the small eastern kingdom of Bishnupur provides an important example of Mughal cosmopolitanism, one that is often overlooked in favour of cities in northern India.

Image 1: (Amrita Sen)

Terracotta temples are not unique to Bengal, although Bishnupur offers some of the older and more exquisite examples. The intricate baked earth panels can be seen to adorn temple walls across Bengal. These terracotta panels are important not only as local craft but also as repositories of cultural memory. It is worth noting that unlike some of the better known European examples of terracotta that are standalone statues or figurines, the Bishnupur temples have numerous detailed panels. The appearance of European figures in various temple sites in Bengal are a testament to how their arrival altered the social fabric of these communities. The arrival of the earliest European merchants not only impacted major business houses or the brokers and banians, but rather, as the terracotta panels seem to suggest, they had a larger discursive influence. The artistic representations made the idea of the European, if not the actual European himself, visible to pilgrims and other visitors who might not have seen or interacted with this new group of foreigners. While much has been written on representations of Africans and Indians in European art, it is equally important to note how communities in these regions were responding to the “global renaissance”.

Talking about how local craftsmen incorporated global influences in their work, European figures would later also creep into the Baluchari saris. One of the unique traits of the handloom saris woven in Bishnupur, is that they tell stories. Apart from tales from the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the weavers would also incorporate aspects from everyday life. Unlike the Banarasi saris, the Baluchari does not include zari (metal thread usually made of gold or silver) work, and instead relying exclusively on the silk thread-work for effect. In this reliance on thread-work, the Baluchari is similar to other well-known types of saris from eastern India such as the Bomkai of Orissa. Extant Baluchari saris from the nineteenth-century depict Europeans sitting on chariots or manning cannons. The Baluchari sari is intended to be worn by women, and not created as tapestry for temples or wealthier households. Given the intricate labour, these saris would likely have been considered luxury commodities, as some of the more ornate saris still are today. Although no specimens survive from the seventeenth century, it is tempting to speculate whether the saris, like the temple terracotta panels, might also have included early European merchants. One of the important frameworks for understanding social transitions in nineteenth-century India is that of the dichotomy between the “home” and the “world.” Women in Bengal, traditionally confined to their homes, were encouraged to embrace the world outside by attending western-style schools and universities. As the motifs on Baluchari sari show however, the world had also entered the homes of Bengali women through textiles and other locally produced objects.

The seventeenth-century terracotta panels of the Jor Bangla temple also reveal how the global forces entered Bishnupur. The Europeans depicted are mostly likely the Portuguese. One of the panels for instance depicts men carrying match-locks on boats that have dragon-heads. Their head-dresses also look suspiciously European. As Pratyay Nath argues, this frieze likely depicts Portuguese or Arakanese pirates:  “In the early-17th century, these Portuguese renegades – in alliance with the Arakanese – started rampant piracy and slave-raids in coastal Bengal. Portuguese and Arakanese war-boats – carrying cannons and matchlockmen – would scour the low-lying areas of the delta, loot villages and carry off thousands of people as slaves.” The temple panels capture this moment of transnational piracy.  

Image 2: Terracotta panel work on Shyamrai Temple, Bishnupur (from Wikimedia Commons)

One of the ways that the Portuguese made their presence in Bengal was through piracy. In fact, one of the words for the Portuguese in Bengali was “hormad” after the Spanish and Portuguese “armada”. The Portuguese pirates often teamed up with other local groups including those from neighbouring Arakan (modern day Myanmar). While landlocked Bishnupur would not have been directly raided by the pirates, the temple panels suggest the deep impact of piracy on Bengal as a whole. The panels depicting the pirate ships stand on temple walls that also depict figures in Mughal garb as well as Hindu mythological characters, thus revealing the complex cosmopolitan worldview of the Bishnupur rulers and artisans. 

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Bibliography:

Basu, Sreela and Abhra Basu. Banglar Terracotta Mandir: Akhyan O Alonkoron. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers,2015.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "The Home and the World in Sumit Sarkar's History of Bengal." In The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908. Sumit Sarkar. Rev. Edition. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010.

Chari, Mridula. “Women smoking hookahs! Saris from 19th century Bengal depict the rapidly modernising world.” Scroll.in. December 10, 2014.    

Chatterjee, Kumkum. “Cultural flows and cosmopolitanism in Mughal India: The Bishnupur Kingdom.” The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 2009;46(2):147-182.

Nath, Pratyay. “Terracotta Tales: Entangled Histories of Bhakti, Violence and Empire from Early Modern Bengal”. The Wire. September 6, 2016. <https://thewire.in/culture/terracotta-tales-entangled-histories-of-bhakti-violence-and-empire-from-early-modern-bengal>

Singh, Jyotsna G. “Introduction: The Global Renaissance.” A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500-1700. Ed. Jyotsna G. Singh. Second Edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021.

Subramanian, Lakshmi. The Sovereign and the Pirate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1700. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Title Image: Terracotta work on Jor Bangla Temple, Bishnupur. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons