Two Royal Damsels Playing Chaupara Lot n° 2

Specifications: Oil on Canvas 53 inches X 35 inches The painting, a contemporary work rendered in oil on canvas, represents two elite ladies playing ‘chaupara’, a derivative of the Sanskrit term ‘Chauranga’, one of the ancient games of India. The painting is rendered in the idiom of modern art of around 1880-1900 A.D. as practiced at Lahore, one of the main centres of Bazaar art. The recovery of a number of pieces or mans with which the ‘chaupara’ was played in excavations of Indus sites suggests that ‘chaupara’ was played in the subcontinent since Indus days, that is, since 3000 to 2500 B.C. Interestingly, the game marks its presence even in divine iconography. Besides scriptures alluding to Indra, other gods and ‘apsaras’ – celestial nymphs, playing ‘chaupara’, the ninth century Kailash temple at Ellora has a sculpture representing Shiva and Parvati as playing it. The Great War – the Mahabharata, as portrays the fifth century B.C. epic of the same name, was mainly the result of the game of ‘chaupara’. Not only the Pandavas’ kingdom but also their wife Draupadi won in the game by cheating had resulted in the Great War. Though some of its folk transforms and variants have also been emerging from time to time, ‘chaupara’ has been since beginning an indoor game of elite, especially the people of court, male or female, played for whiling away time with or without stake, and sometimes as a means of developing skill and trying luck. Basically a game of dice, ‘chaupara’ is played usually with sixteen mans and four players, though sometimes, as here in this painting and in many other examples, such as above quoted those of Shiva and Parvati, or Yudhishthara and Duryodhana in the Mahabharata, it is also played with eight mans and two players. Each four of the mans form one group and have a distinct identity from other groups of four each. ‘Chaupara’ is played on a textile base or play-board having, besides a larger central square,