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Between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries not only was the idea of Banaras as a continuous, holy city consolidated, but its representation in art also gained a particular perspective. The view from the riverfront became the overriding impression of the city, fixing it in a shimmering impression of the exotic, which was yet distant enough to create a vast panoramic view. “Even in the late eighteenth century when William Hodges and William Daniell sketched the riverfront of Banaras, it was a long spectacular bluff crowned with trees and a few prominent temples.”
Perhaps a comparable view in photography would be Panorama of Bombay (1870) by Samuel Bourne, which captures a sweeping view of the oceanfront.
“Since early on in the Western encounter with India, European travellers have been particularly impressed by the city of Benaras. The unique riverfront from a boat or the opposite bank has been a favourite vista. Considering that many travellers came up from Calcutta by ship and thus encountered the city in this manner, this is perhaps not surprising . . . the frontal view of these vedutas was a peculiar Western form of representation. Soon this perspective and the accompanying techniques were adopted locally and incorporated into the traditional modes of representation (for example maps) and new kinds of images emerged. Thus, the colonial situation had a deep impact on the ways the city was perceived, not only by outsiders but also by the inhabitants themselves.”
In a similar vein, although a century later, Indian photographer Babu Jageshwar Prasad, with familial ties to the royal photographers of Banaras, also produced Views of Benaras from the River Side, an album of 20 silver gelatin prints. These photographs are some of the earliest architectural views captured by Indian photographers, with a distinct emphasis on the towering presence of the ghats.
While Ganga’s waters appear pristine and full, the views are distant, making human activity hard to discern. The first panoramic view of the city was published by the missionary Joseph Tieffenthaler in 1786. The ghats, viewed from different perspectives, became the signature image of the city. The works in the first section of this book and exhibition, mostly by European painters, render them the site of bathing, the performing of holy ablutions, scenes of cremation at Manikarnika and Harishchandra Ghats, as well as individuals seated in silent contemplation on the banks of the river.
A fine instance is the painting Benares by Marius Bauer which depicts a solitary figure on the banks, contemplating the river through the soft haze of a morning light. Bauer’s highly impressionistic views drew equally from his fascination with Banaras which he visited in 1897 and then again in 1924-25, as well as his interest in India. Thereafter, in the nineteenth century, an “extended horizontal view was adopted by Indian painters and map makers alike”.
Paintings and maps including pilgrimage charts became popular and were published by Indian presses as well. In 1936, the Bharat Mata temple was added and became the newest accretion to the religious map in pre-independent India.
Bernard S Cohn makes the important point of contrasting the works of artists like Hodges and the Daniells with the overheated medieval European descriptions of the “Gentous” as Indians were spoken of, as horned, satyr-like figures engaged in atrocious rituals, as in Jorg Breu’s Idol of Calicut, dated 1516, in which a male nude idol is seen feasting on a human figure. William Hodges, who gained the patronage of Governor General Warren Hastings, traversed the country, giving us the most consistent rendering of India’s architectural splendour, its tombs, forts and riverfronts.
Returning to England in 1783, he turned forty-eight sketches of India into aquatints, published as the two-volume Select Views in India (1785-88), which reveals vast panoramic views of the country as utterly picturesque. Following Hodges, the Daniells, who travelled in India variously between 1787 and 1793, found the past preserved in India with great fidelity in their view of the Indian landscape.
However, the Indian landscapes rendered in soft pastel shades, vast sweeping views which keep the grit and death rituals of the ghats at bay present a highly sanitised view. Cohn argues that the representations of the Daniells were mediated through the lens of the Western gaze.
“The subject depicted was India, but an India normalised by a particular set of conventions which made India into an object to be appropriated, made accessible and understandable through a cultural screen constructed by and for the British. These representations were to become the ‘real’ India for the British for the next 100 years.”
The popular view of Banaras was fixed in the best tradition of the riverine landscape, familiar to the British viewer through their own art academies. “Travel by river seemed to symbolically capture what was for many of the British the ideal relationship they should have with India. It should appear colourful, varied, picturesque, and was best experienced at a distance, without the smells, din and constant presence of Indians all about them.”
This is an excerpt of an essay from the book Banaras – Imagined Landscape, accompanying the eponymous DAG exhibit that is on display at Windsor Place, New Delhi until April 5.
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