The Voice of the Indian Mona Lisa
Gender and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Rajasthan

An exploration of the young enslaved woman behind the 'Indian Mona Lisa' who became an accomplished poetess and Rajput prince's concubine.

Heidi Rika Maria Pauwels (Author)

9781009201650, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 August 2023

309 pages
28 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.675 kg

'How far can instantiations of aesthetic ideals and literary conventions be interpreted as hearkening back to actual circumstances of life? This essential issue is addressed astutely in the literary study of the Hindi-Urdu poetess Rasikbih?r?, concubine of, and partner in a life-long literary and religious dialogue with, the poet-king N?gar?d?s.' Monika Horstmann, University of Heidelberg

The 'Indian Mona Lisa' is an eighteenth-century portrait of the goddess Radha from the Kishangarh school of Rajput Painting. It was purportedly modelled after a young enslaved woman and court-performer, Ban?-?han?, who became a concubine of the patron of the painting, crown-prince Savant Singh. Tracing her career, Heidi Pauwels recovers her role as a composer of devotional songs in multiple registers of Classical Hindi and shows how she was a conduit for trend-setting styles from Delhi, including the new vogue of Urdu. Through a combination of literary, historical, and art-historical analysis, she brings to life the vibrant cultural production center of Kishangarh in the eighteenth century by reconstructing how Ban?-?han? came to be acclaimed as the devotional poetess Rasikbih?r? and as 'India's Mona Lisa'. This major new study conveys important new insights in the history of Hindi literature and devotion, the family, palace women and the social mobility of the enslaved.

Introduction
1. The making of the 'Indian Mona Lisa'
2. The queen and the slave girl
3. Becoming the prince's concubine
4. Synergy of the literary couple
5. Legacy: Self-fashioning and its limits
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]