Bundi Fort: A Rajput World

Some of the most attractive wall-paintings found anywhere in IndiaImportant new information about court lifeThe wall-paintings in the Rajput fort at Bundi include the earliest and finest examples of court painting known in India. Only recently available for sustained study, these wall-decorations help to define the religious, literary and artistic interests of the court; the functions of the spaces they adorn; the political aspirations of the rulers; and the evolving relationships between one court, its Rajput neighbors, and its Mughal overlords.True understanding of the wall-paintings is impossible without knowledge of the walls that support them, the ceremonials they surrounded or described, and the events, conflicts and alliances which brought the court (and the painters) into contact with other geographic areas and cultural traditions of India. Scholars have recently located local historical chronicles and literary texts (in Hindi) that yield important new information about court life. Additional projects have produced plans and measured drawings of the buildings within the fort at Bundi, as well as photographic documentation of the wall-paintings in situ. Since this is all new, separately conceived information, full publication and coordination of these discoveries is essential, and it should transform understanding of Rajput painting and architecture in Rajasthan.Contents: Introduction, The Rulers of Bundi, Map - Milo Cleveland Beach; Architectural Structures and Spaces in the Fort Palaces at Bundi - Domenico Catania, Attilio Petruccioli, Claudio Rubini; The Wall Paintings of the Badal Mahal - Milo Cleveland Beach; Elephants, War, and Mughal Service: The Martial Lordship of Bundi's Rao Ratan - Cynthia Talbot; Narrations of Self and Other in Mughal Period Literary Culture - Allison Busch; Painted Palaces: Early 17th Century Rajput Architectural Decoration - Edward Leland Rothfarb; The Bundi Palace's Rang Vilas garden: an unusual Rajput chahar bagh - D. Fairchild Ruggles.