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11Story
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Rahu shown as headless figure with sword and discus mounted on goat. Unknown artist, Company School. Photograph. Original water-colour on paper, 28.7 x 22.2 cm
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Rahu is a trickster in Hindu and Buddhist mythology and one of a sub-pantheon of personified planets. In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, he is a demon who disguises himself as one of the gods to drink their elixir of immortality. This is witnessed by the Sun and the Moon, and when they inform the god Vishnu, he cuts off Rahu’s head with a sword. Pursuing his betrayers, the separate head of Rahu occasionally catches and swallows one of them, causing an eclipse.
Many portraits pay close attention to the head and face as key determinants of the subject’s identity. In this picture, Rahu’s identity is indicated not only by his headlessness, but also by his vehicle and weaponry, which depend on the body to be manifested at all. Like its subject, the painting itself plays tricks. By visualising the division of an individual, it reconfirms the normal interdependence of heads and bodies, and of actions and the symbols of actions as signs of identity. |
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