Ganjifa, an ancient card game, is believed to have been brought to India during the Moghul period. The Persian word, Ganjifeh , means playing cards. Beautifully painted, these mainly circular cards (there were some square decks too) were used by kings and noblemen across the country. The colours and iconography differed across regions.
A RARE GANJIFA PAINTING OF MYSORE PHOTO:M.A.SRIRAM TO GO WITH MYRKKNS2.08 A RARE GANJIFA PAINTING OF MYSORE PHOTO:M.A.SRIRAM TO GO WITH MYRKKNS2.08 - A RARE GANJIFA PAINTING OF MYSORE PHOTO:M.A.SRIRAM TO GO WITH MYRKKNS2.08
While the game faded into oblivion, the hand-painted cards with intricate detailing fired the imagination of many an artist and organisation, and resulted in a revival of the art form. Bengaluru’s Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (CKP) recently released the book, Splendours of Ganjifa Art , containing 12 chapters by well-known Ganjifa artists, scholars and historians.
“Last year, CKP had a workshop and exhibition on Ganjifa art,” says MJ Kamalakshi, General Secretary, CKP. “We had brought artists from Mysore, Sawantwadi, West Bengal and Orissa. We used the workshop as the starting point to collect data on the artists and their work and compiled it as a book to put everything about Ganjifa on record. This book is considered the first comprehensive and detailed documentation of the art form with contributions from practising artists and art scholars such as Ranisaheb Subhadadevi Bhonsle who has traced the development of Sawantwadi Ganjifa and lacquerware,”
Talking of the book, CKP President BL Shankar, says, “How did we divide art into classical, traditional, folk or tribal? And where does Ganjifa art fit? The book is enriched with thoughts from discourses and ideas generated in workshops and camps at CKP over the years.”
The Parishath’s earlier publications include Karnataka Leather Puppetry and Traditional Mysore Paintings of Karnataka . “It was time the Parishath brought out a book on Ganjifa. We had indirectly been on the job as art critic BVK Shastry advised us to collect the cards six decades ago,” says Kamalakshi. In 1977, during the Folk and Tribal Art expo, Rajasaheb Parashuram Shivram Bhonsle and Rajmata Satyasheeladevi Bhonsle conducted workshops, demonstrations and sold boxes of Ganjifa cards at the Parishath. In the 1980s, Raghupathi Bhat began working with the forms of Ganjifa and took the initiative to popularise this form. By then, Sudha Venkatesh, a well-known Ganjifa artist from Karnataka, was experimenting on the forms, genres and styles. In 1995, the Crafts Council of Karnataka held a seminar on the dying art forms of Karnataka in which collector Kishor Gordhandas made observations and interventions for the revival of Ganjifa, which is also included in the book.
In Mysore
In the 19th Century, the Maharaja of Mysore, Mummudi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III (1794-1868) created a niche for the game and the art of Ganjifa. “ Kouthuka Nidhi , the last chapter of Sritatvanidhi , the monumental work of the Maharaja, has details of the card game of Mysore, known as the Mysore Chada Ganjifa. It mentions the names of the card games devised by the Maharaja, number of cards used in each game, details of iconography, colour combinations and the corresponding shlokas,” says Kamalakshi.
“Thin, fine line miniature paintings with decorations were mounted on cardboard. Later, some artists were also inspired by the Vijayanagar style. Ganjifa cards were known as kreeda patras and were made on sandalwood and ivory, etched with silver and gold. The complexity of the game and the dominance of Western-printed 52-leaf playing cards later silenced the art, craft and the game,” says Kamalakshi.
There was the Sawantwadi Ganjifa from Maharashtra, Navadurga Ganjifa from Orrisa, Rajasthan and Gujarat, Kashmir Ganjifa, Nepal Ganjifa and the Mysuru Ganjifa. “While we have several artists in Mysore even today, in Raghunathapur near Puri in Orissa every house has a Ganjifa miniature artist,” says Kamalakshi.
One of the Ganjifa Art Cards, a rare collection of cards that are handcrafted and in which the colours used are from natural pigments.
Art historian and scholar RH Kulkarni, who heads the Research Centre at College of Fine Arts, CKP, says, “The origin of Ganjifa cards are traced to Persia and China. In India, they arrived through Sufi saints during the Moghal period. “The Moghul cards had paintings of wrestlers, acrobats, swordsmen, soldiers, hunters, musicians, animals and birds.”
Reviving these treasures
Raghupathi Bhat was inspired by the 200-year-old Ganjifa originals in Mysore and began working on them in the early 1980s developing his own style. Raghupathi, who hails from Udupi and is settled in Mysore, says these days they are sold as craft objects although, “there is less scope for innovation.” Sudha Venkatesh, a senior artist in Mysore exposed to Mysore traditional painting and Ganjifa through her father Ramnarasaiah, an artist and curator at the Mysore Palace, diligently follows the traditional method of drawing. “Although my father felt Ganjifa was a dying art from, he sent me to learn from Kishor Gordhandas when he came to Mysore.”
Call CKP on 22261816 for the book.
