Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ragamala paintings commissioned by British official Richard Johnson c.1780 for insertion into new copies of Indo-Persian musical treatises, and asks what this episode tells us about the effect of British patronage on Indian music during the transition to colonialism.

Paper long abstract:

Since the fourteenth century the North Indian ragas have existed in dual form: as the melodic organising principle of Hindustani art music; and as aesthetic entities anthropomorphised in miniature paintings as heroes, heroines and deities. The connection between the ragas' melodic and aesthetic forms has remained an unsolved mystery since the Mughal period, when the foundational treatises of the substantive Indo-Persian tradition of musical scholarship were laid down. Like his Mughal counterparts, Richard Johnson, Deputy British Resident of Lucknow 1780-82, was a great fan of Hindustani music obsessed with establishing once and for all the true relationship between the ragas' melodic and aesthetic forms. His solution was to commission new ragamala paintings for pre-existing Indo-Persian musical treatises that were never originally intended to be illustrated. Both the act of synthesising these two separate manuscript traditions and of commissioning ragamala paintings that were non-traditional and highly eclectic in style are worthy of examination. This paper will try to establish what on earth Johnson thought he was doing in this ultimately unsuccessful experiment: was he meddling in a destructive fashion in a tradition he didn't understand; or did his innovations instead play a role in remaking Indian art music at a time of turbulance and epistemic transition? Through exploring Johnson's example, this paper will consider what odd cul-de-sacs in the history of Indian music can tell us about the role of British patronage in the transformation of musical culture from late Mughal to early colonial fields of production.