Painting picture courtesy Christie's Auction House Sometimes, a painting begins to ask more questions than it answers. A late eighteenth-century painting, attributed to the Mandi school and catalogued as showing Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra with a courtier, has intrigued me for some time. At first glance, the identification appears straightforward enough. Two men sit opposite each other, smoking hookahs, while attendants stand behind them holding fly-whisks. One figure is dressed in red, the other in white. The scene is informal, almost intimate, and yet unmistakably courtly. But the more I looked at the painting, the less convinced I became that the red-clad figure was Sansar Chand. The reason came from looking at other portraits. Among the surviving paintings associated with the Mandi court are several portraits of Raja Surma Sen, who ruled Mandi from 1781 until his death in 1788. One such portrait shows him seated smoking a hookah, attended by a fly-whisk bearer. Another depicts ...
Hadimba Devi Temple in Manali (picture credit: The OK Travel) As I had mentioned in a post earlier, Kullu's ancient name was Kuluta. The founders of the state are believed by Hutchison and Vogel to be descendants of the Pals who ruled over Prayag, from where they migrated westwards, conquering Haridwar, then known as Mayapuri. The founding of the present state through its current ruling dynasty interestingly is attributed to a Behangamani-Pal around 765 AD, a period where the Palas of Bengal had just come to prominence under their first ruler Gopala I. The Palas were supreme in North India, though they were always competing with the Gurjara Pratiharas and Rashtrakutas for supremacy in the Kannauj triangle. The Palas seem to have founded other states in the Himalayan region, including Mandi, Balor, Bhadu and Bhadrawah, as well as a small feudatory called Batol.The relations are curiously highlighted only in the Vansavali of Balor and Bhadu. Behangamani was one of the eight ...