Muni Punyavijayaji Lecture Series

Unfurling Jain Letters, Local Bazaars, and the Unseen Moods of Mughal and British India

A talk by Dipti Khera
(Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)

Long illustrated letters, sent by Jain merchants invited eminent monks to walk vast tracts of land on foot and spend the next monsoon season in their city. Through such invitations, vijnaptipatras, scribes and painters sought to entice recipients with images of flourishing places and striking visualizations of the invited monk’s future assemblies. Their pioneering pictures mingled imaginary and completed journeys and thereby hoped to stir emotions such as curiosity, awe, and wonder. Composed in and transmitted from bazaars, these letters critically expand the kinds of sources we access to globalize and decolonize specific art histories. The excess inherent to panegyrical representations of place and the emphasis on emotions of plentitude and pleasure in painted letters often reveal unexamined moods and memories of India’s long eighteenth century, alongside the lesser-charted politics, patrons, and publics that shaped early modern and colonial histories.

Date: 28 July, 2024 (Sunday)

Time: 6 pm to 7:15 pm (Tea will be served at 5:30 pm)

Venue: Lecture Hall, L D Museum

About the Speaker

Dipti Khera is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Khera's The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur's Painted Lands and India's Eighteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 2020) was awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in Indian Humanities by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Her recent co-edited volumes include the catalogue for the exhibition A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur (Hirmer Publications, 2022), which she co-curated at the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC and Cleveland Museum of Art; and two special issues, "The 'Long' Eighteenth-Century?" Journal18 (December 2021), and Readings on Painting: From 75 Years of Marg. Volume 74/No 4 and Vol 75/ No 2. Mumbai: Marg Publications (June-September 2023). In 2023-24, Khera holds the American Institute of Indian Studies-National Endowment for Humanities Senior Fellowship and is affiliated with the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

For ages: 18 and above

For registration, please contact:

Call: 079-26306883 | WhatsApp: +91-9408536883

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