Ramayana in Archaic Greek and Etruscan Art, Part V (Boston Deer Hunt)

Description (Main Presentation, Part V):

An in-depth study of the deer hunt on the front side of the Caeretan hydria in Boston. Excerpts from Valmiki's text describing Rama's chase of the golden deer Maricha help explain the meaning of the three different poses of the stag on the Etruscan vase, confirming that it is one deer moving away from the hunters in a dynamic scene. Indian medieval artists prefer to employ the device of multiple heads on the golden deer (instead of multiple poses) to illustrate its deceptive form, elusiveness, rapid movement, and duplicity. The turning or twisting of the head of the deer to look back at the hunters is a common feature shared between the Greco-Etruscan and Indian depictions of Rama and Laksmana's deer hunt, however. Both artistic styles, either through multiple poses or multiple heads, emphasize the extraordinary nature of this particular deer that the two 'nude youths' in the forest are pursuing. In the Caeretan hydria, the three poses from right to left signify a sequence of actions by the deer: panicking when seen by Rama (rearing); looking back with a twisted face to spy the hunter Rama aiming a bow and arrow; and fleeing away at full speed beyond the hunter's range.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbXZD2zpZE&t=846s

Transcript (Main Presentation, Part V):

We now return to a more in-depth analysis of the Boston deer hunt on the front side of the Caeretan hydria number 2. So this is a zoomed-in view of the front side of the Caeretan hydria or Boston deer hunt. And notice how the eyes of the two hunters seem to be honing in on the deer in the middle. And you can see how the stag also in the middle is also eyeing them with the twisted head. And so the reality is that this is a hunt of one deer or a single deer, not multiple deer. The other two poses are quite distinct and are from the same deer. And we’ll be going through that in detail on the next slide.

Before going to the next slide, however, I would like to read you a passage from the Valmiki Ramayana itself which describes this scene that you’re viewing right now on the hydria almost perfectly in some ways. So it reads in Aranya Kanda, Sarga 42, Verses 3-6, we have the following description: “The deer spied the Lord of Kings, that is Rama, rushing toward him and he led him on, now timorously hiding, now showing himself again. Taking up his bow, Rama ran toward the deer. At one moment he would spot him running through the deep forest, temptingly near, and would take his bow in hand, only to look once more and find the deer beyond the range of his arrow. In one stretch of forest he (Maricha in his deer form, that is) came into sight leaping through the air in frightful panic and then he passed into another stretch and out of sight.”

So the parts where the deer is beyond the range of his arrow and out of sight are represented by the deer which is fleeing away in the far left corner, you know, furthest away from the two hunters here. And then the leaping through the air in frightful panic when the deer comes into sight is represented by the first deer which is closest to the two nude youths. And you can see it, you know, in a panic mode leaping up, with its front legs; and of course the deer spying the Lord of Kings rushing toward him is represented by the deer in the middle. So really if you look at the description in the Valmiki Ramayana, you can see the multiple poses or positions of the deer as it tries to get in and out of sight of Rama’s range, of his bow and arrow. So it’s just, it’s quite remarkable that the artists were able to depict this in just one painting.

So just to summarize what we’ve discussed here, the Caeretan hydria in Boston on the front side depicts this dynamic chase through the multiple poses of the stag and represents the moments before Rama strikes Maricha with his arrow, killing the demon. Many depictions actually show the moment when Rama finally kills Maricha and his illusory form is disintegrated. This hydria, however, does not depict this last moment, probably because the focus of the artist is on the deception of Rama and Laksmana who are being done in while Ravana abducts Sita. The stag painted in the middle with the twisted head represents the moments when the deer spied the Lord of Kings, Rama, rushing toward him. And the situation where Maricha comes into sight, leaping through the air in frightful panic, is represented on the hydria by the stag closest to the nude hunters Rama and Laksmana. And of course, the leftmost stag, which is the farthest from the two nude youths, represents the deer beyond the range of Rama’s arrow, which passes into another stretch and out of sight, in Valmiki’s words.

So to identify the three positions, the distinct positions or poses of the stag, we have to view them from right to left. And the rightmost stag, we can see, we can observe the panicked fact and the front legs are raised because it has been alerted that it needs to start fleeing away. And we can also see the quote below: “the good East Greek parallel for the panicking of deer is seen on a Lycian wall painting,” which also dates to the same time period. And again, ‘Lycian’ is a hint that this is a scene that originates from East Greece and Asia Minor and also is probably a myth that is from the Eastern world, not from necessarily the Greek world. Now, the next pose is the twisted neck and the deer’s eyes looking back at the hunters while moving away. It (has) started to gallop away but not at full speed. And it’s also eyeing the hunters and making sure that they don’t have a perfect aim. And then the third pose is, clearly, it’s not looking back at all anymore. It’s only looking straight ahead and it’s running away at full speed with its front legs bent perfectly now. So it’s clearly an indication of a transition from, getting ready to flee, to starting to flee at half speed, and then finally fleeing at full speed without any hesitation.

Jaap Hemelrijk explicitly notes that “hunting deer with the bow on foot is rare anywhere in Greek art.” So these nude hunters who are clearly hunting on foot with bow and arrow are not something you normally see in Greek art. That again is another alert that this is not really a Greek myth that’s being depicted. “The frontal head,” he continues, “of the third stag on No. 2 (hydria) is remarkable, a motif popular in East Greece.” And the third stag in this case is actually the first one from right to left, which is the one with the panicked face and the front legs raised to get ready to start fleeing. And so therefore he realizes that a good East Greek parallel as we have noted earlier for the panicking of deer is seen on a Lycian wall painting, and Lycia is located in Asia Minor. So clearly there’s a lot going on here and there’s not a lot of great, complete answers that they have. They only give hints.

So comparing this scene to the reverse side of the Boston hydria, I have noted that he has stated that the maenad Sita “looks round” (and that’s the key phrase) or looks back in fear while moving away when Ravana grabs her arm. The second pose here of the stag on the front side with eyes looking straight at Rama and Laksmana while striding away is comparable. And also the third pose of the stag which is, you know, the leftmost stag, is comparable to Ravana’s rushed movement with Sita fully in his grasp with bent legs and hooves. So we can see the analogy in many different ways here between Ravana and Maricha, who is disguised as the golden deer, as well as even the maenad Sita and the golden deer.

Classical scholars do hint at the realization of one stag making multiple poses. In his book Caeretan hydria, Jaap Hemelrijk recognizes the “lively” drawing of stags multiple times and he reminds us of the dynamic nature of Maricha who shifts from one position to another in his elusive movement away from the hunters. It really is an ingenious way to present the whole myth in my opinion in one vase or water jar. You have Rama and Laksmana distracted by the deer on one side, in a place far away from the two characters on the other side, which is side B, and those characters are Ravana and Sita, of course. The author does remark directly in a revealing way that the “drawing of stags is lively”, and that’s the key word, and he says, “one expects an arrow to be sticking in one of them.” And he explicitly says one of them. So that is exactly what we see happening in the Valmiki Ramayana. That’s what happens to Maricha the demon who disguises himself as an attractive stag. Eventually Rama catches him and kills him. So Hemelrijk also restates the same observation later on in his book emphasizing the deer’s movement. He says “the movement of the fleeing animals on number two is extremely lively.” So this really is a strong indication that the scholars are coming close to realizing the truth but don’t quite have the ability to connect the liveliness of the movement to the dynamic nature of the moving deer, the singular deer which is Maricha in disguise.

So how do the Indian artists depict Maricha’s multiples poses and trickery in their painting? Well, this is an example on the right side from Himachal Pradesh or Chamba painting. And in it, you can see Maricha’s two different poses, one on the left and one on the right (on the far right). On the left, Maricha appears before the two nude youths Rama and Laksmana and then appears again in his buck form with his head tilted back to look at them on the far right side. The Indian artists thus convey his elusiveness and seductiveness through multiple poses or even heads, which we will see on the next slide. And just to remind you, the demon Ravana is also shown with ten heads. So they (the Indian artists) were very fond of depicting these demons and depicting their treachery and elusiveness through multiple poses and multiple heads.

One example is the two-headed deer sculpture which you can see in Orissa, the state of Orissa (Odisha) in India, which is in the northeastern part of India. And the Indian artists in this state, they employ the magic illusion of two heads to illustrate the golden deer’s elusiveness. And so you can see both of these two pictures here. You can clearly see that one of the heads is tilted back to look at the pursuer and the other is feeding on something to seduce the hunter. And this is from Joanna Williams’ book on the two-headed deer in Orissa. 

There are many characteristics of these extraordinary deers. They are elusive. They are illusory. And also the duplicity is another characteristic. So whether Maricha moves so fast that the hunters see multiple stags or (they see) one stag with multiple heads. So either multiple stags or one stag with multiple heads. Either way, the result is the same, duplicity. And Joanna Williams has stated very clearly, “The two-headed deer catches our eye as an emblem of illusion. What are the implications of this image? The golden deer was part of a trick that enticed Rama away from Sita. To endow it with an extra head is in the words of living painters, to emphasize that it is no ordinary deer. The two-ness of the heads implies duplicity.” 

And so yeah, I mean there’s so many characteristics here, but the main thing is that it’s a very extraordinary deer and it’s illusory and it also is duplicitous. And my own comment is that hunters with a bow and arrow do not normally hunt multiple deer at one time because shooting one arrow after another without stopping like a gun with bullets is not possible. So even though there are two hunters wielding a bow and arrow, the three deer we see on the water jar from Caere are the Ionian artists’ rendering of the hasty movement of one deer as it eludes both of them, in my opinion. The turning of the deer’s head in the second part of the sequence of fleeing is comparable to what we observe in many Indian paintings depicting that scene, i.e. the deer hunt of Rama hunting Maricha. So the fact that the artist paints the deer three times in a moving sequence serves to emphasize the difficulty of the hunter’s chase and the extraordinary nature of this particular deer, just as the two-headed deer from Orissa above is no ordinary deer.

So, just to summarize, whether the artists depict multiple stags or one stag with multiple heads, what they’re really trying to depict for us is that the hunters are seeing Maricha, disguised as the golden deer, moving so fast that it’s like a blur. And that can be, you know, depicted with multiple stags moving in a sequence or one stag with multiple heads, (the latter of) which is what the Indian artists in Orissa chose to do. But they can do it either way, but either way the result is the same, duplicity - the depiction of a duplicitous raksasa demon disguised as a golden deer.

Joanna Williams reinforces my point that both rapid movement and illusion, or Maya as they say in India, are encapsulated in the image of the two-headed deer. She writes that “the images also bear out the charm of the creature, which in the first place captivated Sita, and which both puzzles and amuses us. Thus the deer reminds us in a playful way of uncertainty and the difficulty of making judgements. This is true of the motive as it appears in Orissa, whereas in Gujarat, the same form implies primarily rapid movement, also appropriate to the deer but less specifically evocative of Maya.” So what she’s saying is that it can be interpreted in many different ways. The two-headedness or multiple deer moving in a sequence, they can be interpreted as implying rapid movement and elusiveness, but it also can be appropriate or evocative of Maya, or illusion, as well. 

But the two-headedness is better for implying illusion or Maya, whereas the depiction of multiple stags moving in a sequence is more evocative of rapid movement, of course. So it really is a judgement of the artist whether they want to emphasize one or the other. But they are both very important and they’re both applicable and appropriate to the story of the Golden Deer chase. And on the bottom you can see a picture from Williams’ book, figure 60, where it shows Rama and Laksmana on each corner, and they’re both preparing to hunt the two-headed deer. So you can see that in India as well as in the Ionian artist’s depiction, you can see Rama and Laksmana looking to hunt the deer. And both artists in India and the Ionian, they’re both emphasizing the puzzlement of the hunters and how they are being kind of seduced.

These two images that I’m going to show you are more examples from Indian art - Indian miniature paintings of the Golden Deer episode that illustrate Maricha’s duplicity, seductive form and rapid movement or elusiveness. On the left you see from Bengali folk art the golden deer twisting its head to seduce Rama, who’s almost looking like he’s leaping out of his hut getting ready to hunt it. And on the right side you see the chase is already on and Maricha is in full flight. And you can see that half of his body (is changed) - his body is the deer form but his (real) face is showing, and that indicates his duplicity quite explicitly. And he’s also galloping away fast, whereas Rama is about to aim his arrow at him. The right image seems to emphasize more of the duplicity and the elusiveness of the golden deer, whereas the left image from Bengali folk art is more evocative of the seductiveness of the golden deer. But clearly the characteristics of duplicity, seductiveness or illusory Maya form, as well as rapid movement of the deer or the elusiveness - those three characteristics are the ones that are primarily emphasized in different ways in all of these depictions.