Cosmic Oceans (detail) From the Nath Charit - Bulaki 1823 - Vintage Indian Miniature Painting

These images of perfected practitioners (siddhas) from Stories of the Naths represent a transcendent lineage of yoga. The practitioners are depicted as teachers in a chain of authoritative revelation; several touch forefingers to thumbs in a gesture of imparting knowledge.   Hovering in a subtle realm on a silvery universal sea, they are, from left to right, progressively more material emanations of the Absolute. The Absolute is represented on the manuscript’s first page as an empty space, also on view in this gallery.

Bulaki tackled the concept of a formless, timeless, and luminous essence, which is the basis of the universe in many Hindu traditions. Bulaki portrayed the emergence of all matter and being sequentially by dividing the page into three panels, first on the left representing the absolute as a field of solid, unmodulated gold, a minimal abstraction unprecedented in Indian art.   The second phase conveys bliss—shown as a Nath yogi—and is the first manifestation of the universe as form (or matter). The third stage of creation is vast, cosmic waters, which Bulaki depicted as a silver river flowing from the body of a Nath yogi.