Among the large and largely undocumented collection of Nepalese art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, is a painting (IS.64-1985) of the environs of the Jaggannātha temple in Puri, Orissa. It records the visit of the Newar king Jagatprakāśamalla in NS 790 (1670 CE).
One of the remarkable things about this painting is that it seems to be completely unknown to Nepalese scholars, despite it presumably having been referred to by Guy (1992)*. That in itself may not be too surprising, given that Nepal’s institutions can afford so few modern publications. What is noteworthy is that much of the collection remains uncatalogued and unavailable to the rest of the scholarly world. Meisezahl, for example, refers to a painting of Samvara that was donated (or dedicated?) to the British royal family in the Victorian era — the first and only time I have heard of such a thing.
I would welcome hearing about experiences with the Nepalese collection at the V & A before going there myself.
* Guy, John. ‘New evidence for the Jagannatha cult in seventeenth century Nepal’. Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 2, Pt. 2, 1992. [not seen by me.]
you must already know, but here it is for the record: there is a fairly larger study of this paṭa out one year after Guy in South Asian Studies 9, 1993 (pp. 47-60) by Olek M. Starza-Majewski: “A Seventeenth Century Ritual Pata from the Jagannatha Temple, Puri”.
As it happens, I hadn’t. Thanks for the reference. I wonder what they say about where it was painted; it looks like it was finished in Nepal, but based on drawings made in or brought back from Orissa. The inscription (unfortunately illegible in the online image) should tell us more. I can’t picture Newar kings sitting around waiting for their portraits to be painted (and this was no while-U-wait job) when going on pilgrimage.
Starza-Majewski talks quite a lot about that and also has a go at the inscription. It will all become clear soon if you know what I mean. Perhaps tomorrow.